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The Routledge Handbook of Soviet and Russian Military Studies (Routledge, 2025) edited by Alexander Hill brings together historical and contemporary essays about Soviet and Russian military studies, to offer a comprehensive volume on the topic. Comprising essays written by acknowledged specialists, the handbook examines the development of the Russian and Soviet armed forces from the Napoleonic Wars all the way through to the course and conduct of the ‘Special Military Operation' in Ukraine. Divided into thematic and chronological sections, the volume looks at wars fought by the Tsarist regime through to the First World War; the Soviet Union's ‘Great Patriotic War', from 1941 to 1945; the Cold War (including the Soviet war in Afghanistan); and Russia's post-Soviet wars and military development. In addition, the volume also includes a section that analyses a number of ‘overarching themes', including the development of Russian and Soviet airpower, partisan warfare, counterinsurgency and the role of women in Russian and Soviet armed forces. The volume concludes with an essay looking at whether, using the historical material and material on the conduct of the war in Ukraine, we can reasonably talk of a ‘Russian way of war'. This volume will be of considerable interest to students of the Soviet Union and Russia, strategic studies and military history. Alexander Hill is a Professor in Military History at the University of Calgary, Canada, and a fellow of its Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Red Army and the Second World War (2017). Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar whose research areas are related to Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, military history, War studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, as well as Russian and East European history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
The Routledge Handbook of Soviet and Russian Military Studies (Routledge, 2025) edited by Alexander Hill brings together historical and contemporary essays about Soviet and Russian military studies, to offer a comprehensive volume on the topic. Comprising essays written by acknowledged specialists, the handbook examines the development of the Russian and Soviet armed forces from the Napoleonic Wars all the way through to the course and conduct of the ‘Special Military Operation' in Ukraine. Divided into thematic and chronological sections, the volume looks at wars fought by the Tsarist regime through to the First World War; the Soviet Union's ‘Great Patriotic War', from 1941 to 1945; the Cold War (including the Soviet war in Afghanistan); and Russia's post-Soviet wars and military development. In addition, the volume also includes a section that analyses a number of ‘overarching themes', including the development of Russian and Soviet airpower, partisan warfare, counterinsurgency and the role of women in Russian and Soviet armed forces. The volume concludes with an essay looking at whether, using the historical material and material on the conduct of the war in Ukraine, we can reasonably talk of a ‘Russian way of war'. This volume will be of considerable interest to students of the Soviet Union and Russia, strategic studies and military history. Alexander Hill is a Professor in Military History at the University of Calgary, Canada, and a fellow of its Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Red Army and the Second World War (2017). Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar whose research areas are related to Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, military history, War studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, as well as Russian and East European history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs
The Routledge Handbook of Soviet and Russian Military Studies (Routledge, 2025) edited by Alexander Hill brings together historical and contemporary essays about Soviet and Russian military studies, to offer a comprehensive volume on the topic. Comprising essays written by acknowledged specialists, the handbook examines the development of the Russian and Soviet armed forces from the Napoleonic Wars all the way through to the course and conduct of the ‘Special Military Operation' in Ukraine. Divided into thematic and chronological sections, the volume looks at wars fought by the Tsarist regime through to the First World War; the Soviet Union's ‘Great Patriotic War', from 1941 to 1945; the Cold War (including the Soviet war in Afghanistan); and Russia's post-Soviet wars and military development. In addition, the volume also includes a section that analyses a number of ‘overarching themes', including the development of Russian and Soviet airpower, partisan warfare, counterinsurgency and the role of women in Russian and Soviet armed forces. The volume concludes with an essay looking at whether, using the historical material and material on the conduct of the war in Ukraine, we can reasonably talk of a ‘Russian way of war'. This volume will be of considerable interest to students of the Soviet Union and Russia, strategic studies and military history. Alexander Hill is a Professor in Military History at the University of Calgary, Canada, and a fellow of its Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Red Army and the Second World War (2017). Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar whose research areas are related to Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, military history, War studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, as well as Russian and East European history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
The Routledge Handbook of Soviet and Russian Military Studies (Routledge, 2025) edited by Alexander Hill brings together historical and contemporary essays about Soviet and Russian military studies, to offer a comprehensive volume on the topic. Comprising essays written by acknowledged specialists, the handbook examines the development of the Russian and Soviet armed forces from the Napoleonic Wars all the way through to the course and conduct of the ‘Special Military Operation' in Ukraine. Divided into thematic and chronological sections, the volume looks at wars fought by the Tsarist regime through to the First World War; the Soviet Union's ‘Great Patriotic War', from 1941 to 1945; the Cold War (including the Soviet war in Afghanistan); and Russia's post-Soviet wars and military development. In addition, the volume also includes a section that analyses a number of ‘overarching themes', including the development of Russian and Soviet airpower, partisan warfare, counterinsurgency and the role of women in Russian and Soviet armed forces. The volume concludes with an essay looking at whether, using the historical material and material on the conduct of the war in Ukraine, we can reasonably talk of a ‘Russian way of war'. This volume will be of considerable interest to students of the Soviet Union and Russia, strategic studies and military history. Alexander Hill is a Professor in Military History at the University of Calgary, Canada, and a fellow of its Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Red Army and the Second World War (2017). Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar whose research areas are related to Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, military history, War studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, as well as Russian and East European history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies
The Routledge Handbook of Soviet and Russian Military Studies (Routledge, 2025) edited by Alexander Hill brings together historical and contemporary essays about Soviet and Russian military studies, to offer a comprehensive volume on the topic. Comprising essays written by acknowledged specialists, the handbook examines the development of the Russian and Soviet armed forces from the Napoleonic Wars all the way through to the course and conduct of the ‘Special Military Operation' in Ukraine. Divided into thematic and chronological sections, the volume looks at wars fought by the Tsarist regime through to the First World War; the Soviet Union's ‘Great Patriotic War', from 1941 to 1945; the Cold War (including the Soviet war in Afghanistan); and Russia's post-Soviet wars and military development. In addition, the volume also includes a section that analyses a number of ‘overarching themes', including the development of Russian and Soviet airpower, partisan warfare, counterinsurgency and the role of women in Russian and Soviet armed forces. The volume concludes with an essay looking at whether, using the historical material and material on the conduct of the war in Ukraine, we can reasonably talk of a ‘Russian way of war'. This volume will be of considerable interest to students of the Soviet Union and Russia, strategic studies and military history. Alexander Hill is a Professor in Military History at the University of Calgary, Canada, and a fellow of its Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Red Army and the Second World War (2017). Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar whose research areas are related to Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, military history, War studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, as well as Russian and East European history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
From the chroniclers seeing them as God's punishment, to Tsarist historians trying to push them out of Russian history altogther, to Stalinists banning any mention of them other than as predatory parasites, this episodes looks at some of the ways Russian historians have struggled to come to grips with the Mongols.
In this episode, A'ndre welcomes Professor Marlene Laruelle, a leading expert on Russian politics and nationalism, for a deep dive into the evolution of far-right politics in Russia. The discussion begins with a foundational exploration of fascism—how it is defined, how it differs from broader far-right politics, and whether Russia's current trajectory aligns with historical fascist movements. Professor Laruelle traces the development of Russian far-right ideology from the Soviet collapse to the present day, analyzing its intersections with Soviet-era communism and Tsarist-era nationalism. She examines how elements of Stalinism persist in Putinism and how Russian nationalism has evolved under Putin's leadership.The conversation also expands beyond Russia, addressing Moscow's role in exporting far-right ideology to Eastern Europe and the broader rise of far-right politics across the continent. Professor Laruelle considers whether these trends reflect a broader rejection of the global liberal order or if they are driven by country-specific dynamics. A'ndre and Professor Laruelle then discuss whether growing illiberalism in Europe could signal a deeper shift towards authoritarianism. Finally, they explore whether the rise of far-right politics in the United States mirrors trends in Europe and Russia, or if these movements are shaped by unique national contexts.NOTE: This episode was recorded on December 17, 2024.
Lenin had no intention of national independence for Ukraine or any of the other non Russian nations of the former Tsarist empire. This podcast explores how the Bolsheviks responded to the national movement in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War.Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each weekIf you enjoy the Explaining History podcast and its many years of content and would like to help the show continue, please consider supporting it in the following ways:If you want to go ad-free, you can take out a membership hereOrYou can support the podcast via Patreon hereOr you can just say some nice things about it here Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/explaininghistory. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week on The Learning Curve, co-hosts Alisha Searcy of DFER and U-Arkansas Prof. Albert Cheng interview Dava Sobel, acclaimed author of The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science. Sobel delves into the life of Marie Curie, the “scientific Joan of Arc,” exploring her extraordinary journey from clandestine education in Tsarist-controlled Poland to becoming the first woman to win two Nobel Prizes in different scientific disciplines. She highlights Madame Curie's groundbreaking discoveries of radium and polonium, with her husband Pierre Curie, and her pioneering work in radioactivity. Sobel also examines Marie Curie's role as a mentor to women scientists, her wartime contributions with mobile X-ray units, and her enduring legacy as a trailblazer for women in STEM. Through Madame Curie's story, Ms. Sobel reflects on the power of scientific curiosity and its profound societal impact. In closing, Sobel reads a passage from her book, The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science.
Support Our Cause at https://libri-vox.org/donate Leo Tolstoy's "A Confession," written in 1882 shortly after a life-altering spiritual crisis, is a brutally sincere reflection on life, morality, and the nature of faith. Tolstoy describes in great detail the process by which he lost his faith in established Christian churches, the meaninglessness of wealth and fame, the agony of acute depression, and how he overcame misery and dread through personal study of the teachings of Jesus Christ. Along the way, he contrasts the artificial faith and arrogance of educated people with the genuine faith and humility of the Russian peasant. This work, and others of its ilk, were aggressively censored by the Tsarist regime and directly led to Tolstoy being excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church. Summary by Paul Rizik.
#Londinium90AD: Gaius & Germanicus observe the Putin aim to reassemble the Tsarist Empire. Michael Vlahos. Friends of History Debating Society. @Michalis_Vlahos 1718 Rome
Step into the shadows of history with "The Hidden Hand: Unveiling the Global Conspiracy," a powerful exposé that dares to reveal the secrets of a world dominated by unseen forces. Based on the notorious 1967 recording by Myron C. Fagan, this presentation uncovers the chilling truth behind the Illuminati's centuries-old plot to control global events and manipulate the masses. From the founding of the Illuminati in the 1760s to their modern incarnation within the Council on Foreign Relations, this account delves deep into the machinations of international bankers, shadowy elites, and covert operations that have shaped the course of history. As wars raged and nations fell, the masterminds behind this grand conspiracy pulled the strings from behind the scenes, influencing the rise and fall of governments, the spread of communism, and the destruction of religious faith. Now, for the first time, this suppressed information is brought to light, challenging everything you thought you knew about the world around you. Prepare to question reality, as we explore the terrifying agenda that aims to enslave humanity under a one-world government, driven by the sinister forces of the Illuminati.Introduction and Context (0:00 - 0:40)Opening Remarks: The recording begins by introducing the concept of a world where nothing is random, and major global events are preordained and documented long before they occur.Myron C. Fagan: The speaker highlights that the recording was made in 1967 by Myron C. Fagan, a Hollywood writer who allegedly uncovered dark secrets within the Hollywood elite. Fagan dedicated his life to exposing these secrets, and the recording is presented as the culmination of his work.Purpose of the Recording: The recording claims to provide a historical lens through which the listener can understand the alleged hidden forces at play in the world. The content is framed not as conspiracy theory but as documented historical fact.The Illuminati and Media Control (0:40 - 6:25)The Illuminati: The recording introduces the Illuminati as the central force behind a global conspiracy aimed at destroying the sovereignty of the United States and enslaving its people within a one-world dictatorship. This conspiracy is purportedly unknown to the majority of Americans.Media Control: The recording asserts that the masterminds of this conspiracy have absolute control over mass communications media, including television, radio, press, and Hollywood. This control is claimed to extend to manipulating news and information to brainwash the public into accepting a one-world government.CIA and Media: There is a brief exchange where the speaker discusses the CIA's involvement in media, with allegations that the agency has paid contributors to major American journals, television networks, and news services like AP and UPI.Historical Origins of the Conspiracy (6:25 - 10:05)Adam Weishaupt and the Illuminati's Founding: The recording traces the origins of the Illuminati back to Adam Weishaupt, a former Catholic priest who, under the influence of the Rothschild family, founded the Illuminati in the 1760s. The Rothschilds are said to have financed the operation, which allegedly promoted every major war since the French Revolution.Council on Foreign Relations (CFR): The recording claims that after World War I, the Illuminati in the United States rebranded itself as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which continues to control the U.S. media and government.Press Control: Weishaupt's plan is said to have included gaining absolute control over the press to manipulate public opinion in favor of a one-world government.Illuminati's Influence and Strategy (10:05 - 15:01)World Wars and Revolutions: The recording details a supposed plan by Albert Pike, an Illuminati leader, to instigate three world wars and several revolutions to advance the conspiracy. The First World War was allegedly aimed at destroying the Tsarist regime in Russia and establishing atheistic communism.World War II and Beyond: World War II was purportedly orchestrated to build up communism to rival Christendom, with a final goal of leading to World War III, where political Zionism and Islam would destroy each other, leaving the world exhausted and ready for the Illuminati's control.Final Social Cataclysm: The recording claims that Pike foresaw a final social cataclysm, where nihilists and atheists would be unleashed, leading to the destruction of both Christianity and atheism, paving the way for the public revelation of Luciferian doctrine.The Role of International Bankers (15:01 - 19:08)International Bankers and Wars: The recording asserts that international bankers, particularly the Rothschild family, have financed both sides of every war and revolution since 1776. These bankers are said to be the true masterminds behind the global conspiracy, using wars to further their goals.Control of U.S. Finances: Jacob Schiff, a Rothschild agent, is introduced as a key figure in establishing control over the U.S. financial system. Schiff's mission included taking over the U.S. monetary system, promoting influential individuals into high government positions, creating racial strife, and destroying religion.Civil War and Post-War Influence (19:08 - 22:05)Civil War Efforts: The recording claims that the Illuminati's first concrete efforts to take over the U.S. were made during the Civil War, with Rothschild agents embedded in both the Confederate and Union governments. Abraham Lincoln's assassination is tied to this conspiracy, suggesting that Lincoln opposed the Rothschilds' plans, leading to his murder.Post-Civil War Influence: After the Civil War, the Rothschilds allegedly regrouped and continued their efforts, with Jacob Schiff arriving in America to carry out the conspiracy.Final Phases of the Conspiracy (22:05 - End)One World Government: The recording concludes by describing the final goal of the Illuminati—a one-world government controlled by a few elite individuals, including the United Nations, the CFR, and influential billionaires.Rothschild's Influence: The Rothschild family is depicted as the primary force behind the global conspiracy, with their agents, like Schiff, laying the groundwork for the financial and political control necessary to achieve their goals.Conclusion: The recording ends by reiterating that the global conspiracy has been in motion for centuries, with all major events in history being part of this master plan. The final objective is a one-world government, with all other forms of government and religion eradicated.This recording is presented as a detailed exposé of a global conspiracy led by the Illuminati, with historical events, wars, and political movements portrayed as orchestrated by this secretive group to achieve world domination. The content is delivered as a mixture of historical narrative and speculative interpretation, with the overarching theme of a hidden hand guiding the course of world history toward a predetermined outcome.
Anxiety may have been abounding in the old Cold War West that progress - whether political or economic - has been reversed, but for citizens of former-socialist countries, murky temporal trajectories are nothing new. Grounded in the multiethnic frontier town of Hunchun at the triple border of China, Russia, and North Korea, Ed Pulford traces how several of global history's most ambitiously totalizing progressive endeavors have ended in cataclysmic collapse here. From the Japanese empire which banished Qing, Tsarist, and Choson dynastic histories from the region, through Chinese, Soviet, and Korean socialisms, these borderlands have seen projections and disintegrations of forward-oriented ideas accumulate on a grand scale. Taking an archaeological approach to notions of historical progress, the book's three parts follow an innovative structure moving backwards through linear time. Part I explores “post-historical” Hunchun's diverse sociopolitics since high socialism's demise. Part II covers the socialist era, discussing cross-border temporal synchrony between China, Russia, and North Korea. Finally, Part III treats the period preceding socialist revolutions, revealing how the collapse of Qing, Tsarist, and Choson dynasties marked a compound “end of history” which opened the area to projections of modernity and progress. Examining a borderland across linguistic, cultural, and historical lenses, Past Progress: Time and Politics at the Borders of China, Russia, and Korea (Stanford UP, 2024) is a simultaneously local and transregional analysis of time, borders, and the state before, during, and since socialism. Ed Pulford is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Manchester. His research and teaching focus on anthropological and historical approaches to Eurasian borderlands, Sino-Russian relations, the past and present of socialism, and comparative experiences of socialism and empire. He has lived and worked in China, Russia, Japan, and Korea. Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Anxiety may have been abounding in the old Cold War West that progress - whether political or economic - has been reversed, but for citizens of former-socialist countries, murky temporal trajectories are nothing new. Grounded in the multiethnic frontier town of Hunchun at the triple border of China, Russia, and North Korea, Ed Pulford traces how several of global history's most ambitiously totalizing progressive endeavors have ended in cataclysmic collapse here. From the Japanese empire which banished Qing, Tsarist, and Choson dynastic histories from the region, through Chinese, Soviet, and Korean socialisms, these borderlands have seen projections and disintegrations of forward-oriented ideas accumulate on a grand scale. Taking an archaeological approach to notions of historical progress, the book's three parts follow an innovative structure moving backwards through linear time. Part I explores “post-historical” Hunchun's diverse sociopolitics since high socialism's demise. Part II covers the socialist era, discussing cross-border temporal synchrony between China, Russia, and North Korea. Finally, Part III treats the period preceding socialist revolutions, revealing how the collapse of Qing, Tsarist, and Choson dynasties marked a compound “end of history” which opened the area to projections of modernity and progress. Examining a borderland across linguistic, cultural, and historical lenses, Past Progress: Time and Politics at the Borders of China, Russia, and Korea (Stanford UP, 2024) is a simultaneously local and transregional analysis of time, borders, and the state before, during, and since socialism. Ed Pulford is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Manchester. His research and teaching focus on anthropological and historical approaches to Eurasian borderlands, Sino-Russian relations, the past and present of socialism, and comparative experiences of socialism and empire. He has lived and worked in China, Russia, Japan, and Korea. Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
Anxiety may have been abounding in the old Cold War West that progress - whether political or economic - has been reversed, but for citizens of former-socialist countries, murky temporal trajectories are nothing new. Grounded in the multiethnic frontier town of Hunchun at the triple border of China, Russia, and North Korea, Ed Pulford traces how several of global history's most ambitiously totalizing progressive endeavors have ended in cataclysmic collapse here. From the Japanese empire which banished Qing, Tsarist, and Choson dynastic histories from the region, through Chinese, Soviet, and Korean socialisms, these borderlands have seen projections and disintegrations of forward-oriented ideas accumulate on a grand scale. Taking an archaeological approach to notions of historical progress, the book's three parts follow an innovative structure moving backwards through linear time. Part I explores “post-historical” Hunchun's diverse sociopolitics since high socialism's demise. Part II covers the socialist era, discussing cross-border temporal synchrony between China, Russia, and North Korea. Finally, Part III treats the period preceding socialist revolutions, revealing how the collapse of Qing, Tsarist, and Choson dynasties marked a compound “end of history” which opened the area to projections of modernity and progress. Examining a borderland across linguistic, cultural, and historical lenses, Past Progress: Time and Politics at the Borders of China, Russia, and Korea (Stanford UP, 2024) is a simultaneously local and transregional analysis of time, borders, and the state before, during, and since socialism. Ed Pulford is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Manchester. His research and teaching focus on anthropological and historical approaches to Eurasian borderlands, Sino-Russian relations, the past and present of socialism, and comparative experiences of socialism and empire. He has lived and worked in China, Russia, Japan, and Korea. Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies
Anxiety may have been abounding in the old Cold War West that progress - whether political or economic - has been reversed, but for citizens of former-socialist countries, murky temporal trajectories are nothing new. Grounded in the multiethnic frontier town of Hunchun at the triple border of China, Russia, and North Korea, Ed Pulford traces how several of global history's most ambitiously totalizing progressive endeavors have ended in cataclysmic collapse here. From the Japanese empire which banished Qing, Tsarist, and Choson dynastic histories from the region, through Chinese, Soviet, and Korean socialisms, these borderlands have seen projections and disintegrations of forward-oriented ideas accumulate on a grand scale. Taking an archaeological approach to notions of historical progress, the book's three parts follow an innovative structure moving backwards through linear time. Part I explores “post-historical” Hunchun's diverse sociopolitics since high socialism's demise. Part II covers the socialist era, discussing cross-border temporal synchrony between China, Russia, and North Korea. Finally, Part III treats the period preceding socialist revolutions, revealing how the collapse of Qing, Tsarist, and Choson dynasties marked a compound “end of history” which opened the area to projections of modernity and progress. Examining a borderland across linguistic, cultural, and historical lenses, Past Progress: Time and Politics at the Borders of China, Russia, and Korea (Stanford UP, 2024) is a simultaneously local and transregional analysis of time, borders, and the state before, during, and since socialism. Ed Pulford is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Manchester. His research and teaching focus on anthropological and historical approaches to Eurasian borderlands, Sino-Russian relations, the past and present of socialism, and comparative experiences of socialism and empire. He has lived and worked in China, Russia, Japan, and Korea. Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Anxiety may have been abounding in the old Cold War West that progress - whether political or economic - has been reversed, but for citizens of former-socialist countries, murky temporal trajectories are nothing new. Grounded in the multiethnic frontier town of Hunchun at the triple border of China, Russia, and North Korea, Ed Pulford traces how several of global history's most ambitiously totalizing progressive endeavors have ended in cataclysmic collapse here. From the Japanese empire which banished Qing, Tsarist, and Choson dynastic histories from the region, through Chinese, Soviet, and Korean socialisms, these borderlands have seen projections and disintegrations of forward-oriented ideas accumulate on a grand scale. Taking an archaeological approach to notions of historical progress, the book's three parts follow an innovative structure moving backwards through linear time. Part I explores “post-historical” Hunchun's diverse sociopolitics since high socialism's demise. Part II covers the socialist era, discussing cross-border temporal synchrony between China, Russia, and North Korea. Finally, Part III treats the period preceding socialist revolutions, revealing how the collapse of Qing, Tsarist, and Choson dynasties marked a compound “end of history” which opened the area to projections of modernity and progress. Examining a borderland across linguistic, cultural, and historical lenses, Past Progress: Time and Politics at the Borders of China, Russia, and Korea (Stanford UP, 2024) is a simultaneously local and transregional analysis of time, borders, and the state before, during, and since socialism. Ed Pulford is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Manchester. His research and teaching focus on anthropological and historical approaches to Eurasian borderlands, Sino-Russian relations, the past and present of socialism, and comparative experiences of socialism and empire. He has lived and worked in China, Russia, Japan, and Korea. Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology
Anxiety may have been abounding in the old Cold War West that progress - whether political or economic - has been reversed, but for citizens of former-socialist countries, murky temporal trajectories are nothing new. Grounded in the multiethnic frontier town of Hunchun at the triple border of China, Russia, and North Korea, Ed Pulford traces how several of global history's most ambitiously totalizing progressive endeavors have ended in cataclysmic collapse here. From the Japanese empire which banished Qing, Tsarist, and Choson dynastic histories from the region, through Chinese, Soviet, and Korean socialisms, these borderlands have seen projections and disintegrations of forward-oriented ideas accumulate on a grand scale. Taking an archaeological approach to notions of historical progress, the book's three parts follow an innovative structure moving backwards through linear time. Part I explores “post-historical” Hunchun's diverse sociopolitics since high socialism's demise. Part II covers the socialist era, discussing cross-border temporal synchrony between China, Russia, and North Korea. Finally, Part III treats the period preceding socialist revolutions, revealing how the collapse of Qing, Tsarist, and Choson dynasties marked a compound “end of history” which opened the area to projections of modernity and progress. Examining a borderland across linguistic, cultural, and historical lenses, Past Progress: Time and Politics at the Borders of China, Russia, and Korea (Stanford UP, 2024) is a simultaneously local and transregional analysis of time, borders, and the state before, during, and since socialism. Ed Pulford is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Manchester. His research and teaching focus on anthropological and historical approaches to Eurasian borderlands, Sino-Russian relations, the past and present of socialism, and comparative experiences of socialism and empire. He has lived and worked in China, Russia, Japan, and Korea. Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
Anxiety may have been abounding in the old Cold War West that progress - whether political or economic - has been reversed, but for citizens of former-socialist countries, murky temporal trajectories are nothing new. Grounded in the multiethnic frontier town of Hunchun at the triple border of China, Russia, and North Korea, Ed Pulford traces how several of global history's most ambitiously totalizing progressive endeavors have ended in cataclysmic collapse here. From the Japanese empire which banished Qing, Tsarist, and Choson dynastic histories from the region, through Chinese, Soviet, and Korean socialisms, these borderlands have seen projections and disintegrations of forward-oriented ideas accumulate on a grand scale. Taking an archaeological approach to notions of historical progress, the book's three parts follow an innovative structure moving backwards through linear time. Part I explores “post-historical” Hunchun's diverse sociopolitics since high socialism's demise. Part II covers the socialist era, discussing cross-border temporal synchrony between China, Russia, and North Korea. Finally, Part III treats the period preceding socialist revolutions, revealing how the collapse of Qing, Tsarist, and Choson dynasties marked a compound “end of history” which opened the area to projections of modernity and progress. Examining a borderland across linguistic, cultural, and historical lenses, Past Progress: Time and Politics at the Borders of China, Russia, and Korea (Stanford UP, 2024) is a simultaneously local and transregional analysis of time, borders, and the state before, during, and since socialism. Ed Pulford is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Manchester. His research and teaching focus on anthropological and historical approaches to Eurasian borderlands, Sino-Russian relations, the past and present of socialism, and comparative experiences of socialism and empire. He has lived and worked in China, Russia, Japan, and Korea. Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/geography
Anxiety may have been abounding in the old Cold War West that progress - whether political or economic - has been reversed, but for citizens of former-socialist countries, murky temporal trajectories are nothing new. Grounded in the multiethnic frontier town of Hunchun at the triple border of China, Russia, and North Korea, Ed Pulford traces how several of global history's most ambitiously totalizing progressive endeavors have ended in cataclysmic collapse here. From the Japanese empire which banished Qing, Tsarist, and Choson dynastic histories from the region, through Chinese, Soviet, and Korean socialisms, these borderlands have seen projections and disintegrations of forward-oriented ideas accumulate on a grand scale. Taking an archaeological approach to notions of historical progress, the book's three parts follow an innovative structure moving backwards through linear time. Part I explores “post-historical” Hunchun's diverse sociopolitics since high socialism's demise. Part II covers the socialist era, discussing cross-border temporal synchrony between China, Russia, and North Korea. Finally, Part III treats the period preceding socialist revolutions, revealing how the collapse of Qing, Tsarist, and Choson dynasties marked a compound “end of history” which opened the area to projections of modernity and progress. Examining a borderland across linguistic, cultural, and historical lenses, Past Progress: Time and Politics at the Borders of China, Russia, and Korea (Stanford UP, 2024) is a simultaneously local and transregional analysis of time, borders, and the state before, during, and since socialism. Ed Pulford is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Manchester. His research and teaching focus on anthropological and historical approaches to Eurasian borderlands, Sino-Russian relations, the past and present of socialism, and comparative experiences of socialism and empire. He has lived and worked in China, Russia, Japan, and Korea. Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/korean-studies
This episode delves into the pivotal October Revolution, where the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917, leading to the establishment of the Soviet Union. The revolution resulted from deep-seated social grievances and political upheaval under Tsarist rule, ultimately reshaping Russia's political landscape and influencing global politics in the 20th century.
Last time we spoke about the New Culture Movement. China had seen humiliation after humiliation and her population was fed up. The leaking of secret dealings by foreign powers, Japan and members of the Chinese government alongside a weak stance at the Paris Peace Conference broke the camels back. The New Culture Movement that was brewing under these circumstances saw the Chinese public begin to question their traditions, confucianism and this feeling of always looking into the past, rather than the future. Things simply could not keep going on the way that they were. Numerous intellectuals began demanding major reforms to really modernize China. From vernacular writing systems, to the emancipation of women and egalitarian rights, the Chinese people were angry and they were soon going to demonstrate their anger towards their government. It would all start with youthful students who would change China forever. #93 The May Fourth Movement of 1919 Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. The Xinhai Revolution of 1911 had given rise to the spirit of Chinese nationalism, demanding resistance to foreign encroachment and the elimination of domestic autocracy. While the Manchu's were overthrown, Yuan Shikai was quick to seize the movement hostage. He silenced opposition when the Beiyang Republic was formed. Then WW1 came crashing in like a wrecking ball upon China. The Empire of Japan defeated the Germans and now occupied the Shandong Peninsula. Yuan Shikai protested this of course, but from the publics point of view not too strongly. Taking full advantage of the international situation the Japanese then imposed the twenty-one demands upon China. This was leaked to the world, enraging the Chinese populace. Though Yuan Shikai did negotiate them down into the Thirteen Demands, it was yet again another humiliation and a sign of how weak the Chinese government was. When this occurred Chinese intellectuals, students and workers were beginning to form groups and argue about what should be done. There was a sense of national survival at stake. In response to the Twenty-One Demands situation a boycott of Japanese goods was organized in Shanghai, and this rapidly began to spread to other cities. Yuan Shikai ordered the boycotts to seize as they spread to Yangtze port cities. Regardless the people of China still had high hopes by joining the Entente during the war, this would see China reverse her misfortunes and regain things like the Shandong Peninsula. When WW1 ended on November 11 of 1918, there was such widespread hope the national disgrace would come to an end. Chinese intellectual leaders, and leading businessmen believed the defeat of Germany had finally brought an end to the disgusting practice of secret diplomacy, foreign encroachment on their nation, militarism and the dictatorship that was pretending to be a republic. It was assumed the Shandong Peninsula lease that originally was given to the Germans, currently held by the Japanese illegally, would simply be handed back over to China. China had done a lot for the Entente war effort, she had provided hundreds of thousands of laborers at critical moments of the war, many believed, and I would say rightfully so, China earned certain demands. Well those hopes were torn to shreds at the Paris Peace Conference. News of the conference reached China, particularly that of Japan being awarded the Shandong Peninsula. The Chinese public found out about the secret Sino-Japanese Treaty deal that Duan Qirui had signed and that of Britain's secret double promising deal to Japan to award her the Shandong Peninsula. There were also the secret Nishihara loans that had first been signed by Yuan Shikai and were then inherited by Duan Qirui. Because of all of this on April 30th, 1919 China lost her entire case at the conference, Japan was awarded the Shandong Peninsula and on top of that, there was zero mention of when the lease would return to China. All of these developments had been followed closely by Chinese intellectuals, political leaders and businessmen who were genuinely concerned about their nation's survival. When the Chinese public found out, the first instinct was to demand those responsible for the terrible outcomes be brought to justice. Because of all the secret dealing and other exchanges between leading Beiyang officials in Beijing and Japan, they were the first culprits cited for the failure of China to regain her lost territories and there was a large suspicion there were Chinese individuals basically selling out their country to Japan. It had now become the general feeling of the people, foreign powers had hurt China, but also traitors within her government. Intellectual leaders and students who had been exposed to foreign ideologies were extremely disappointed. By the turn of the century, countless Chinese students had gone abroad studying in Japan, the United States and Europe. They encountered new ideas, and they reflected upon them, before proposing how such ideas could be used to solve China's problems. In the last episode I spoke a lot about the intellectuals who brought these ideas to China. Hu Shih studied in the United States, Chen Duxiu studied in Japan, both men would become leaders of what will become known as the May Fourth Movement and other events later on. Both men would go very different paths, but at this point in time they both understood the dangers facing their nation and wanted to save it. It was within this time period the New Culture Movement sprang up. The leaders of the movement believed China's traditional confucian based culture was holding her back from actually modernizing into a modern state. Many of them advocated for western ideas to modernize China. Chen Duxiu returned from Japan in 1915 where he had established the New Youth magazine, basically creating the vehicle for intellectuals to bring new ideas to the Chinese public. He was soon joined by Li Dazhao who also returned from Japan in 1916. When these intellectuals returned to China, they found her in a highly repressive state. Under Yuan Shikai, there were severe laws governing the press and these laws would survive him until the early 1920s. Yuan Shikai's dictatorship charade of a republic became even worse when he proclaimed himself Emperor. 83 days of that disaster simply proved to the people of China, the same old tyrants that they had apparently overthrown in 1911 were still large and in charge. Laws restricted speech, association and the press, forcing publishers like the New Youth to constantly reiterate they were not creating political criticisms, just simply talking to the youth of the nation. Both Hu Shih and Chen Duxiu knew the most egregious problems facing China was her inability to toss the yoke of 2000 years of Confucianism. Both men believed it was necessary to destroy some of the old traditions to awaken their countrymen, particularly the Chinese youth so they could build a new modern state. Chen Duxiu was perhaps more inclined to want to destroy the confucian ideological bases that held up the monarchy. In 1917 his New Youth began to carry out a program calling for dramatic reforms. At first the New Youth evaluated the pro's and con's of vernacular writing over classical; of western science vs chinese traditional beliefs; the virtues of confucianism and so forth. The New Culture leaders began calling for a rejection of the old traditional values and adoptions of western ideals, something they colloquially called “Sai xiansheng /Mr. Science” and “De Xiansheng / Mr. Democracy” who would replace “Mr. Confucius”. Doing such things they argued would strengthen the new Chinese state. Lu Xun wrote famous essays like the Diary of a Madman and the True Story of Ah Q criticizing classical Chinese writing and confucianism. Lu Xun would soon be regarded as one of modern China's first great writers. The effectiveness of his stories drew from a sort of anger towards Confucianism. For example with the Diary of a Madman, the narrator slowly goes insane, convinced the Chinese people around him are all cannibals. Here is a sort of translated exurb ‘It has only just dawned on me, that all these years I have been living in a place where for four thousand years human flesh has been eaten. They eat human beings, so they may eat me. I look up the history of cannibalism in a book of Chinese history, but all he finds in the book are the two phrases Confucian virtue and morality and eat people. Finally convinced that I may have eaten several pieces of my sister's flesh unwittingly….Perhaps there are still children who haven't eaten men? Save the Children”. Within Chinese history, cannibalism has been a powerful image of when a society has lost all of its values and morality and for Lu Xun he was basically assaulting the entire basis of the Beiyang government and their society using this metaphor. Others like Li Dazhao by 1918 began expressing support of the October Revolution in Russia and in september of 1918, a young Mao Zedong became his assistant at the Peking University Library where they organized the Marxist Research Society. The Twenty-One Demands had ushered anti-japanese campaigns and the New Cultural movement. Western ideas of science, democracy, criticisms of traditional chinese customs, literature, history, philosophy, religion, social and political issues were all argued over. Political and social ideas like liberalism, pragmatism, utilitarianism, anarchism, socialism, communism all the “isms” were being measured against China's traditional culture like one of them held the answer to solve her problems. The youthful students were caught up in all of this, and they decided to hold mass demonstrations on May 7th of 1919, the fourth anniversary of Japan's ultimatum for the Twenty-One Demands. Events however forced these students to initiate their plans 3 days earlier on the morning of May 4th. Student leaders met at Peking college of Law and Political Science. They came from 13 colleges and universities, including the University of Peking, the heart of them all. During their meetings they came up with 5 resolutions to press upon their government: Number 1) To oppose the granting of Shandong to the Japanese under former German concessions. Number 2) To draw and increase awareness of China's precarious position to the masses in China. Number 3) To recommend a large-scale gathering in Beijing. Number 4) To promote the creation of a Beijing student union. And Number 5) To hold a demonstration that afternoon in protest to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Of the five resolutions, two had special importance: to awaken the Chinese people to the facts of foreign oppression and domestic treachery, and to create a permanent organization of Peking students. At 1:30pm on the 4th, over 3000 students gathered at Tiananmen square. They represented 13 colleges and universities in Beijing. The Beiyang Government tried to prevent their mass meeting by dispatching the Ministry of Education to Peking University at 11am, but he was unsuccessful at stopping the students. By 2pm, the students began to march while distributing leaflets along their way. They carried large placards with slogans written in French, English and Chinese. Slogans read “struggle for the sovereignty externally, get rid of the national traitors at home” “do away with the twenty-one demands” “don't sign the treaty of versailles”. They also demanded the Japanese collaborationists Cao Rulin, Lu Zongyu and Zhang Zongxiang be brought to justice. They made their way to Beijing foreign Legation quarter, but they were blocked at the gates and refused entry. They waited over 2 hours, demanding entry into the quarter until they were told it was never going to happen. The students then headed north towards the residence of Cao Rulin, the Minister of Finance at the time. They considered him the worst of the treacherous bunch. They rushed into his residence hunting him down and the police intervened. Students were beaten up and 32 were arrested. After the arrests, martial law was enacted around the area surrounding the Legation Quarter. Immediately after everything had gone down, the students began to organize the intellectual leaders to support their cause. They tried to win over the public through more demonstrations, mass meetings, public lectures and so forth. The established contacts amongst the masses of less educated, illiterate peoples to try and secure support from the business sector to boycott Japanese products. Their ideals began to spread throughout all of China. Chow Tse-tung a harvard graduate had this to say about the feeling of the time. country. "The Movement's aims, soon won sympathy from the new merchants, industrialists, and urban workers, and the Peking Government was forced to compromise in its foreign and domestic policies. This victory of the new coalition facilitated the expansion of the cultural and intellectual reforms it advocated”. Within two months of the incident, a series of student demonstrations and strikes managed to form an alliance between students, businessmen, industrialists and workers. Though on the surface it looked like a purely student movement, the May Fourth Movement was the logical result of the efforts of the intellectual leaders of the New Culture Movement. It was the professors, teachers and writers who had inspired the youthful students to form the mass movement. They were supported wholeheartedly by the intellectual leaders and this formed a de facto alliance between reformists and revolutionaries. The New Culture Movement swelled from this alliance, drawing in people who would have been indifferent to it. Everyone began questioning the old traditional culture, it was like an ideological virus. Political organizations, such as the Communist Party of China developed during this time. Among the masses caught up in the movement was a young Mao Zedong who became an active member of the New People's Study Society. At the time he was the editor of the Student Union Publication of Hunan province which promoted students cause and was critical of the Beiyang government. The weekly publication was quickly suppressed by the military governor of Hunan. This only further intensified Mao Zedong's anti government activities and drove him further and further towards Marxism. Later in 1939, as the CCP senior leader Mao Zedong would claim the May Fourth Movement was a stage leading toward the fulfillment of the Chinese Communist Revolution “The May Fourth Movement twenty years ago marked a new stage in China's bourgeois-democratic revolution against imperialism and feudalism. The cultural reform movement which grew out of the May Fourth Movement was only one of the manifestations of this revolution. With the growth and development of new social forces in that period, a powerful camp made its appearance in the bourgeois-democratic revolution, a camp consisting of the working class, the student masses and the new national bourgeoisie. Around the time of the May Fourth Movement, hundreds of thousands of students courageously took their place in the van. In these respects the May Fourth Movement went a step beyond the Revolution of 1911”.Other prominent CCP figures would be born from the movement. In fall of 1919 at Wuchang, Lin Biao became an organizer for the Social Welfare Society and the Social Benefit Book Store. In September of 1919 a young Zhou Enlai returned from studying in France and joined the Awakening Society in Tientsin. Yet while I just emphasized the communist leaders that emerged, the May Fourth Movement was dominated primarily by western ideas. Liberalism, anarchism, utopian socialism and marxism gradually saw a wedge drive between them forming two competing factions. Mr. Chow Tse-Tung said of this ''The Movement, gradually became involved in politics, and the united front of new intellectuals collapsed. The liberals (reformists) lost their zeal or turned away from political activity, whereas the left wing (the revolutionary intellectuals) of the Movement took the expedient political step of allying itself with the nationalists to overthrow the warlord Peking regime . " Prior to the May Fourth Movement, marxism was not really picking up much speed amongst the intellectuals in China. Li Dazhao just a few months prior to the May fourth movement was the only real Bolshevik in China. Excluding his students, Li Dazhao's views of the Bolshevik revolution that had recently occurred in Russia was not really taken seriously as a tool to reconstruct China, let alone the world. In January of 1919, Li Dazhao called upon the people of Asia “to rise against the European imperialist robbers, only by overthrowing the capitalist classes of the whole world”. With this he argued the oppressed peoples would do away with the injustice of the international order that allowed the great powers to continue humiliating China. In February of 1919, while everyone was anticipating the outcome of the Paris Peace Conference, Li Dazhao called it “the european division of the spoils conference”. Many intellectuals in China still pinned their hopes on Versailles, when the outcome came many were driven to radicalism. Many were driven to socialism and there are many reasons why it was so attractive. Many of the intellectuals saw within socialism many of the same ideals of western democracy. However many of them rejected the existing political and social order of the west…and why wouldn't they, the west was exploiting their nation and others. In many ways they viewed socialism as a sort of marriage between their nationalistic ideals and anti-imperialism. China had suffered greatly due to imperialism from the west and Japan. When they heard about the Bolshevik revolution against their tyrannical Tsarist government it was seen very much as a anti-imperialist movement. In so many ways, the May Fourth Movement of 1919 was akin to a Chinese Renaissance, certainly with its focus upon science and democracy. Following the May Fourth Movement came the creation of the CCP in 1921, but also the revitalization of the Kuomintang. Now this is also right smack dab in the middle of the Warlord Era. I am choosing to keep these things separated because the podcasts would just go all over the place, but beginning roughly in 1919 major Warlords would commence in this episode Game of Thrones scenario. Wars, propaganda, diplomacy, alliances, its a crazy history with numerous big figures and it will rage all the way until the Japanese invasion of 1931. We will be stuck in this period for…well I have no idea haha. On my personal channel I tried to tackle the warlord Era, it ended up being 7 episodes long, with one long format to encompass it around an hour and 47 minutes long. Even with that, I barely scratched the Warlord Era, I only tackled the most well known battles and figures, I missed countless ones, thus I am hoping in this podcast series to do a much more full job. I will admit its difficult to get good sources as a non Mandarin speaker, but during my experience researching for my youtube channel I luckily came across a lot. Not to toot my own horn, but other than literally CCTV run channels, I think I am the only person on Youtube who even tried to cover the warlord period effectively. I will give credit to a fellow Quebecois Jesse Alexander from the Great War Channel, they did do a large summarization of the Warlord Era. Anyways getting off track, I now want to finish this episode up just explaining the greater influence the May Fourth Movement would have. The emergence of the CCP on the political stage as a form of anti-imperialism was foreshadowed by Li Dazhao. Li Dazhao had been one of the main advocates emphasizing anti-imperialism and political action. His students were pressed to go out and influence the common people of China, from the urban cities to the rural villages. After the May Fourth Movement, Li Dazhao became a major leader and many flocked to him. Li Dazhao's library at the Peking University where Mao Zedong was working as an assistant became the regular meeting place for student leaders. There they came under his influence. The Marxist Research Society organized by Li Dazhao sent its members across China to spread their ideals. I am no fan at all of communism, but like it or not, this is a hell of a grassroots movement that obviously would become successful in the end. Its important to learn how such mechanism came to be, how they operated and so forth. Li Dazhao did not have the firmest understanding of Marxism when he began championing it to China, but he ignited the flame that would turn China ultimately in the Peoples Republic of China. He offered Marxism as a sort of revolutionary ideology that would save China. He did this in a very anti-imperialistic environment, thus it was highly palatable. Chen Duxiu was also drawn to Marxism, a lot so because of the Shandong Problem. He was disgusted with what he saw as treachery on the part of the imperialistic nations and leaders within the Beiyang government. Now Chen Duxiu took up a stance of not getting political involved, that was until the May Fourth Movement. After this he quite literally jumped into the heck of it. Chen Duxiu was so politically active, he was arrested on June 11th of 1919 after being caught distributing leaflets across Beijing. He spent 83 days in prison, once he got out he resigned from his position as a professor at Peking University and moved to Shanghai which was becoming a Marxist hub. Numerous Chinese intellectuals became radicalized and this gradually broke the unity of the movement apart. Hu Shih for example had studied in the United States and was deeply influenced by John Dewey and thus came to represent the reformist intellectual side. Hu Shih would go on to write countless articles arguing against the adoption of “isms” and doctrines and instead to suggest it be better to study the practical social problems. Doctrines that advocated fundamental solutions to social problems, were not entirely irrelevant, but probably hindrances to their solutions according to Hu Shih. Li Dazhao once wrote a letter to Hu Shih arguing that specific social problems could not be solved without the participation of the masses, thus there was a need to instill a consciousness of society's problems as a whole, so they could relate this to their own individual problems. Li Dazhao asserted “intellectuals need to go out and work in the practical movement, which to him meant the propagation of socialist theory and its advocacy as a tool to eliminate the non-laboring bureaucratic robbers." Li Dazhao furthered this by arguing to his followers like Mao Zedong the necessity for those studying revolutionary ideals to really study the conditions of the world, so they could adapt the theory to said conditions. So there was kind of a battle between Hu Shih and Li Dazhao. Hu Shih advocated for solving China's problems gradually through social reforms, while Li Dazhao wanted revolution. Now again Hu Shih was deeply influenced at the time by John Dewey, and as American Sinologist Maurice Meisner said about the debates between Hu Shih and Li Dazhao “"Hu Shih had formulated his ideas in terms of the American philosophical and sociological tradition . . . The philosophy and sociology of John Dewey did not need to be concerned with the structure of society as a whole because in the American social context it could be optimistically assumed that the whole world would take care of itself. Dewey's program was essentially conservative, assuming that reform would take place within the framework of existing institutions; but it was a product of a society that could afford conservatism, a society that could solve particular social problems because there already existed a viable social structure and a general consensus on the direction of social progress . . .As applied to China, Dewey's program was neither conservative nor radical but largely irrelevant. After the Revolution of 1911 China was confronted with a crisis of social, cultural and political disintegration of massive proportions. The extreme poverty and widespread illite:racy of the masses of the Chinese people and the lack of even the rudiments of responsible political authority negated the possibility of the general social consensus that Dewey's program presupposed. Because of the overwhelming social crisis within and the threat of foreign aggression from without, the very existence of the Chinese nation was in doubt at the time . . . To advocate the study of particular social problems and to call for social reform (piecemeal) was to assume that there existed or would soon arise a viable social and political structure within which problems could be and reforms implemented. This assumption was unwarranted either by the existing situation or by any realistic hopes for the immediate future. In view of the total crisis of Chinese society, Dewey's program was doomed to failure." The debate between the two revealed a crucial issue, the necessity of changing words into action. You can criticize Marxism on multiple grounds and rightfully so, but I don't think anyone would disagree its not effective action wise. By its very nature Marxism enforces real action to take place. By the mid 1920's Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu easily looked like they would assume leadership positions in the CCP, and of course in the background was Li Dazhao's assistant Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong was greatly influenced by the May Fourth Movement and he saw it as a great dividing line between the earlier stage of a bourgeois-democratic revolution in China and for him a later stage, the awakening of the working class in alliance with progressive bourgeoisie. As said by Mao Zedong in his essay on New Democracy: " China's cultural or ideological front, the period preceding the May fourth Movement and the period following it form two distinct historical periods. Before the Movement, the struggle on China's cultural front was a struggle between the new culture of the bourgeoisie and the old culture of the feudal class ... the ideology of the new learning played the revolutionary role of fighting the Chinese feudal ideology and was in the service of the bourgeois democratic revolution of the old period ... But since the May fourth Movement, things have gone differently. Since then a brand new cultural force of fresh strength has appeared in China, namely, the ideas of Communist culture guided by the Chinese Communists: · the Communist world outlook and the Communist theory of social revolution. The May fourth Movement occurred in 1919, and in 1921 the Chinese Communist Party was founded and China's labor movement actually began . . . Before the May fourth Movement, the new culture of China was a culture of the old-democratic character and a part of the capitalist cultural revolution of the world bourgeoisie. Since the May fourth Movement, it has become a culture of new-democratic character and a part of the socialist cultural revolution of the world proletariat . . . What is called new democratic culture is the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal culture of the broad masses of the people . ·· . New democratic culture is, in a word, the and anti-feudal culture of the broad masses of the people under the leadership of the world proletariat”. Overall the May Fourth Movement had a profound effect on the development of modern China. It convinced many Chinese intellectuals, correctly or incorrectly, the only adequate response to imperialism was revolutionary action seen in form of Communism. Yet something stood in the way of turning China into a communist nation. Warlords. Then after the Warlords were defeated, Chiang Kai-Shek emerged as the leader of the fractured nation, forced to lead the fight for China's survival against the Empire of Japan. Yet the CCP put its head down, they worked, worked very hard and waited for the right moment. When it came, they struck, and they won. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. The May fourth movement was a watershed moment for modern Chinese history. In many ways it was the great moment where two dividing forces emerged that would be embodied later in Chiang Kai-Shek's nationalists and Mao Zedong's CCP. The fight for the future of China had begun, though it remains in the background as the age of the Warlords has come.
Having been introduced to Lysenko and why he still matters, having given a rudimentary picture of agricultural research in the Tsarist days, we will today suit up in the armour of proletarian science, as to be able to fight the beasts that lay ahead. This episode is a bit theory heavy but I've sprinkled it with some comedy, some parallax events and a biological cliffhanger of the centuries! We are standing at the gate of the law but unlike Kafka's protagonist we will not be discouraged by the guard or his warning of other guards, more mightier door after door, come dream or nightmare we must step through for the sake of an environmental future that is not a virtual hologram. Brace yourself dear listener, for it's getting heavier.
Today, we finish our three-part series on the traumatic events of the end of the Tsarist regime with the people's perspective of the Russian Revolution.Support the show
Last time we spoke about the rise of Yuan Shikai, the outbreak of WW1 and the siege of Tsingtao. Yuan Shikai used every dirty little trick to seize and maintain his authority in the new republic. He forced the KMT's hand, prompting Dr. Sun Yat-sen to usher in a second revolution, but it ultimately failed as Yuan Shikai controlled the best army in China. Simultaneously world war one broke out and this placed China in an awkward position. Multiple nations held special territorial concessions in China and now they might bring the war to her borders. China protested as much as she could, but the Empire of Japan simply did not care when they came over to lay a siege against the Germans at Tsingtao. The siege of Tsingtao saw many historical firsts and was quite brutal. After all was said and done, China was served yet another humiliation, with many more to come. #89 China's forgotten role during the Great War Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Now this episode is actually going to be a bit of a side step from the chronological narrative so to say. China underwent an enormous amount of events during the course of WW1, most having to do with political relations towards the Empire of Japan. However, quite some time ago, on my personal channel, the pacific war channel, I tackled asia during WW1. I wrote a few episode looking at China, Japan, southeast asian nations, and something I found quite interesting is how China aided the Entente powers. People completely overlook this aspect of the Great War, but China and some of her southeast neighbors provided an incredible amount of manpower to both the western and eastern fronts. Stating that, I want to simply dabble into the specific subject of “what exactly did China do for the war effort?”. In the next episode we will jump into things like the twenty-one demands and the Treaty of Versailles. The declarations of war in Europe in late July and early August brought military conflicts immediately upon Chinese territory. On August 6th, 1914 China proclaimed her neutrality and prohibited the belligerents of WW1 from undertaking military operations upon Chinese soil. Now at the beginning it was sort of believed if not perceived the Great War was essentially a conflict between imperial powers, over their colonial possessions in a big game of world supremacy, thus China expected to remain neutral as a partially colonized country. Japan certainly did not care and began a siege against Tsingtao. China initially protested against the Japanese warfare upon her soil, but there was little Yuan Shikai could do about it. We wont get into here, but Japan certainly followed up her disrespect against China immediately after the siege of Tsingtao. Needless to say, China remained neutral for most of the war and this placed her in an interesting position. Now Yuan Shikai secretly offered British Minister John Jorden, 50,000 Chinese troops to help retake Tsingtao, but the British refused. The reason they refused was because of Japan. Japan refused to allow Chinese soldiers to fight in the war, because she was hoping to secure her authority as a powerhouse in the east. While Chinese citizens were not allowed by the Chinese government to participate in the fighting, this did not stop them from other actions Liang Shiyi was in charge of railways, the most profitable ministry within the government at the time and he had a grand idea. He called it “Yigong daibing” “laborers in the place of soldiers”. Now during the Ming and Qing dynasties, the idea of Chinese people going abroad to work was unprecedented. Both the Ming and Qing dynasties discouraged citizens from leaving the country and would persecute those who had. The Qing issued decrees banning emigration in 1717 and 1729, which would not be repealed until 1893. Thus when Liang Shiyi brought up the idea in 1915, it sort of showed how much China had changed in a short amount of time. He discussed his idea with Entente diplomats in early 1915. His original suggested to the British was to use military laborers, men who would carry guns, not be hired laborers. Now you might be asking, why do such a thing, what did China have to gain? If Britain accepted the proposal, it would mean China was fighting on the side of the Entente. But Britain turned Liang down in early 1915 and it is obvious as to why. Anyone who officially joined the war on either side, when the war was over would get a respected seat at the peace table, whereupon you could make demands. For a humiliated nation like China, seeing numerous global powers encroach upon her with unequal treaties, it was a no brainer getting a seat at that peace table might gain them what they wanted, to be rid of the unequal treaties, hell maybe even join the big boy club. Having received the no from the British as one does, Liang went to the French. Now France from the offset of WW1 was in quite a panic and the idea of acquiring new human resources looked like an amazing idea. For France particularly in the summer of 1915, such an idea might be the decisive factor to win them the war. It also just so happened France was in the processing of securing new human resources from her vast colonial empire. If you want to hear more about French Indochina and Thailand's experience with WW1, please check out my specific episode on it, or my long format documentary on Asia during WW1 at the Pacific War Channel…or podbean I do have audio podcasts same channel name. Thus France began working with Chinese diplomats on the issue of recruit Chinese laborers. Come the summer of 1916, Britain's perspective had dramatically changed since 1915, as they were short on manpower. Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig requested 21,000 laborers be recruited to fill Britain's manpower shortage. This was to be restricted to the Western Front, as the British home front held domestic labor unions who vigorously fought any attempt to bring Chinese workers to the isles. Beginning in August of 1916, Britain began its Chinese recruitment plan. Now China as I said would remain neutral for most of the war, so technically the Chinese laborers were hired on the basis of a written contract, ie: treated like a regular work force. Now I am going to start off with the western front, thus the Chinese laborers fell into two categories, the travailleurs and spécialistes, translated semi-skilled labor and skilled labor, not literal translations, but as I interpret it. Funny enough my job outside the podcast business has me coordinating semi-skilled educational programs for high school students so I certainly know a lot about this haha. To summarize, semi-skilled labor is a term today referring to basic common labor whereas skilled labor is more difficult requiring more education. You can make a son of comparisons, but I find this one makes sense to the most people: a semi-skilled laborer in the kitchen setting is a dishwasher, you can grab a new worker, show them the ropes rather quickly and let them work, whereas a skilled laborer is a line cook, it takes some culinary education or a lot of training until that person can do the job effectively. I also worked in the restaurant business for a long time haha. So with France the general contracts were for 5 years, with the British it was 3 years. The Chinese laborers in France would legally be equal to their french counterparts. They would be allowed to celebrate both Chinese and French holidays with benefits paid about 5 francs per day. For the British the Chinese would work 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, paid one franc per day, while their families back in China received 10 Mexican dollars a month. Its difficult to estimate but a WW1 era franc probably can go for about 15 USD, so thats like 75$ per day for France, while for the British its 15$ a day + roughly 1100 USD a month. Now the laborers needed to be transported, fed, clothed and houses, and this was to be at the cost of France and Britain. Between 1916-1918 France recruited roughly 40,000 Chinese laborers, while Britain hired 100,000 who worked in France under their authority. When the United States joined the war, the American Expeditionary Force arranged to borrow 10,000 Chinese laborers from France to employ them under identical terms. The majority of the 140,000 Chinese laborers came from Shandong province. In 1916, the French government approached China asking to recruit its citizens for non-combatant use. A contract was agreed upon may 14th 1916 supplying 50,000 laborers who would make their way to Marseille in july of 1916. This was followed up by Britain's War Committee in London who formed the Chinese Labour corps, with its main recruiting base established in Weihaiwei on october 31st 1916. The first transport ship carried 1,088 laborers sailing from Weihaiwei on january 18th 1917. The journey took three months, each volunteer received an embarkment fee of 20 yuan, followed by 10 yuan a month paid to their families in China. By the end of the war this would account for roughly 2.2 billion dollars earned by Chinese laborers. As a result of the German submarine attacks, Britain needed a safe route and shipped 84,000 Chinese laborers through Canada. This was done in absolute secrecy as at the time Canada had the discriminatory Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 and Chinese Head Tax. Thus they boarded trains journeying 6000 kilometers from Vancouver to Montreal never leaving the train. As reported by the Halifax Herald in 1920 “They were herded like so much cattle in cars, forbidden to leave the train and guarded like criminals”. It was a grueling experience to be sure. China began to ship thousands of men to Britain, France and Russia. These non-combatants would repair tanks, assemble shells, transport supplies like munition, and dig trenches amongst many other things. Hundreds of Chinese students served as translators. It should be noted that the Chinese government and many intellectuals saw the overseas work as an enormous opportunity for Chinese youth to learn new technical skills and ingenuity which could be brought back to the homeland. The French and British military were the ones doing the recruiting, thus the majority would fall under military management and were organized into military type units commanded by officers. If they broke the rules, they could be court martialed and at least and at least 10 under British authority were executed during the war. It should be noted, during WW1 there were a lot of executions for numerous reasons, such as cowardice on the battlefield. Now the Chinese were promised they would not be working under fire, but more often than not they worked in close proximity to military zones, particularly under the British. Until China officially joined the war, the French kept their Chinese workers pretty far from the front lines. After China joined the war in 1917, the French began to assign Chinese to military zones more frequently. There were major differences between the French and British labor programs. The French mainly recruited through the mediation of Chinese contractors, while the British used their own agents. Also as you probably already noticed, the French offered better treatment than the British. For example the French paid higher wages and their labor laws were less restrictive, compared to that of the British labor corps. Now this was the early 20th century, racism was rampant, arguably more so for the British side, who notably locked their worker camps up with wire. The American expeditionary Forces apparently were the most racist, and this is not surprising as America certainly had more experience with Chinese labor. Between 1882-1943 Chinese laborers in American were discriminated against heavily, and the Americans in France had similar attitudes. Racism aside, there obviously were cultural differences, leading to misunderstandings and ignorance on both sides. It did not help that there was a lack of interpreters leading to managerial problems. Despite the racism, cultural misunderstandings and instances of mistreatment it has to be noted, Chinese laborers were a crucial component of the Entente war effort. The great war was a total war, it involved the frontlines and home front. The Chinese who came to France were youthful and strong men. They worked extremely hard, as I said 10 hour days, typically 7 days a week with some holidays. By the end of the war and for a considerable amount of time afterwards, virtually all cranes in Dieppe, Havre, Rouen, Calais and Zeneghem were operated by Chinese. The French had a lot of praise for the Chinese laborers. General Ferdinand Foch said of them “Chinese laborers are first-class workers who could be made into excellent soldiers, capable of exemplary bearing under modern artillery fire.” H.R Wakefield of the British had this to say in a report “a splendid and versatile worker, inured to hardship and almost indifferent to the weather . ...It was certain that he would learn rapidly to cope with all the multitudinous kinds of work demanded by the huge British military organization overseas. ...Chinese [laborers] have a marvelous gift of imitation, and consequently they learn new and difficult tasks with great facility. ...[T]heir speed and endurance are phenomenal. Although the introduction of Chinese labor was a great experiment and there were some who shook their heads when it was first suggested…the experiment has succeeded, the doubters have become enthusiasts, the work accomplished has already been enormous, disputes and misunderstandings have been marvelously rare. The credit for this success can be equally shared by the British and Chinese”. It was said the Chinese work ethic impressed the British and French so much they became more welcoming to them compared to Indian and Egyptian workers. The British government began the repatriation of Chinese laborers in the fall of 1919 and this was completed on April 6th of 1920. The French repatriation program ended in March of 1922. By the end of the war, roughly 3000 Chinese laborers remained and settled down in France, including 1850 qualified men who signed new contracts to work for metallurgical industries. Other workers found employment in the mechanical or aeronautical sectors. Many of those who remained married French women. Two lived long enough to receive the French Legion of Honor in 1989. The Chinese under the British often found themselves working near battlefields and many did as a result. They were hit by bombardments and some Chinese workers even found themselves tossed into combat against German forces during emergencies. Tragically, after the war was over, there was a colossal amount of work needed for mine clearing and many Chinese would perish during this. By October of 1919, 50,000 Chinese laborers remained in the British camps as they were being evacuated roughly 15,000 per month. Nearly 2000 were buried in France. Many would not even make it to France. On february 17th, 1917 the French passenger ship SS Athos was sunk by the German U-boat SM U-65 off the coast of Malta. The ship was carrying 900 Chinese workers and 543 of them were killed. Roughly 3000 Chinese lost their lives in the Entente war effort in the west. The United States had recently severed diplomatic ties to Germany as a result of its unrestricted submarine warfare and pushed China to do the same. China severed diplomatic ties with Germany in March. The United States further advised China, that if they wished to be at the peace agreements China should declare war on Germany. China took the advice and declared war on the central powers on august 14th 1917. Now this was all for the Chinese laborers in the western front, but the Chinese also did the same for the Russian empire. Like Britain and France, Russia's economy was collapsing as a result of WW1. The massive mobilizations and insane levels of casualties for the Russians forced the Tsarist government to procure labor by unconventional means. At first they began using women and POW's to compensate, but this quickly proved insufficient, so Russia turned to China. Now Russia had experience hiring Chinese labor since the 1890s, specifically for railway construction. It's more difficult to obtain information on the eastern laborers, but Chinese scholars estimate up to a possible 200,000 Chinese laborers worked in Russia. The system for Russia was nothing like France or Britain. Prior to WW1, private Russian companies and state projects using Chinese agents recruited workers within China, mostly in Shandong, Hebei and Manchuria. They contracted workers individually or in groups, who were given Russian visas and transportation by ship to Vladivostok or by train from Harbin. These laborers helped build the Trans-Siberian railway, local urban infrastructure and agricultural work, playing a key role in the development of the Russian Far East. Thus when WW1 came around, Russia already had a system in place to hire workers. They worked in coal mines in the Donetsk region, cut timber in the Siberian Taiga, constructed railways in the polar zones of Northern Russia, carried ammunition and dug trenches in the eastern front. Most of their recruitment was done in northeast China by the private companies like the Yicheng company, until 1916 when the Tsarist government tried to simplify things by placing control of recruiting under the Chinese Eastern Railway company in Harbin. The Chinese eastern railway company took care of all the administrative formalities such as performing medical examinations of workers, clothing them, provisioning them for the journey and placing them on guarded trains. And here is where the eastern workers differed rather dramatically from the western workers. Once in Russia, the Chinese workers were pretty much abandoned for a lack of better words. In the west, Chinese laborers worked under contract for the governments of Britain or France who managed them. In the east the Russian government did not manage them, it was private merchants. This meant many Chinese in the east did not receive adequate sheltering, clothing or food once in Russia. Conditions were extremely rough, the Chinese worked 10-11 hours a day, 7 days a week, living out of badly heated and overcrowded barracks. Sometimes they had no water supplies nor basic sanitation facilities. Many fell ill from the cold, lack of any medical care or food. Unlike with the French or British, Russian officers were not always assigned to overlook them, thus countless were just left on their own. Many of these laborers were employed to build a 1044 kilometer railway linking St-Petersburg to a new port in Murmansk. This meant they had to lay a line across frozen marches, lakes, rocky terrains and through countryside that was uninhabited and could supply nothing but timber. They worked in the cold, nights could reach 40 degree celsius. Many died due to extreme cold, lack of nutrition and disease. Because of the terrible conditions, Chinese laborers routinely protesting and performed violent riots. The Russians suppressed them very harshly, considering the incidents, mutiny's and a sort of sabotage of war related production. After receiving so many reports of mistreatment of their workers in Russia, the Chinese government demanded their own official representatives be allowed to accompany large groups of the workers in Russia to defend their labor rights. Russia refused to satisfy the demands, but did try to improve the working conditions. Unlike in the west where the Chinese laborers were strictly monitored and confined to specific areas, the Russians kind of dumped them everywhere. With so many Chinese scattered about Russia when the Russian government collapsed because of the Russian revolution, countless were stranded. Many Chinese laborers joined the Red Army or various guerilla groups during the Russian Civil War. Many Chinese laborers truly sympathized with the Bolshevik cause, others simply joined the Red Army to survive. Those who did join the Red Army often did so for food or the opportunity to get back home as the revolution left many stranded. Ren Fuchen was China's first bolshevik and he was the commander of the Chinese Red Eagle Battalion. Estimates vary significantly, but it is estimated up to 40,000 Chinese laborers joined the red army fighting in multiple fronts like Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, the Caucasus, Volga and Siberia. They had no attachment to Russia or its places and thus were very useful as executioners and many were used as shock troops as no one expected to be attacked by Chinese. Their wartime experiences and cross-cultural exchanges with the Russians would play a critical role in shaping China's political trajectory during the interwar period. As we will discuss in greater detail in other episodes, the Bolsheviks sprang for the seed that would eventually create the CCP. It was during this cross cultural exchange in Russia that communism made its way to China, on the backs of the laborers coming home. Thus this rather extraordinary story of Chinese departing their country to work or in some cases fight in the Western and Eastern front during WW1 was significant both for the history of China, but also global history. Working and fighting side by side with the Entente displayed China's determination to play a role in world affairs. Taking a step back, think about China's history until this point. Its more or less always been shutting out the world, rather than embracing it. When China was forced open under very brutal and tragic circumstances, it robbed her of being really able to join the world order. Despite being so ingrained in the global economy for so long, she was a very isolated state. It seemed to China, this was finally the moment she could rise to the occasion, change her fate as it were. China clearly signaled this to the world by her actions during the Great War. Also this was the first major time for her citizenry to really experience the west. It provided them with an opportunity to observe and learn from other civilizations, many students for example who went over would reflect on Chinese society. When they returned home, the brought with them new ideas and a strong desire for change. From the east this brought Marxist ideology, from the west it was various forms of democracy, capitalism, hell things we think of today as basic human rights. Chinese laborers abroad came back to China forming a new national identity. There was also a large element of seeking experience and education. It was not simply the common class going out on their own, the Chinese Republic was pushing people specifically to go out into the world, receive education and vocational training to bring back to China. In something of a grand migration scheme the Republic hoped by sending some of their brightest students and technical laborers, they might manage something along the lines of what the Japanese did during the Meiji years. To give a more specific example, take the story of Li Shizeng. Li Shizeng was an intellectual, politician, and entrepreneur who went to study in France at the turn of the 20th century. He was very influential and helped translate many French books into Chinese. He advocated for dramatic reforms in China and was always pushing to have Chinese come into personal contact with the west, encouraging study and work abroad. In 1902 when he went to France for the first time alongside Wu Zhihui, they discussed the possibility of sending ordinary Chinese to Europe. For them the key to China's salvation was education in western nations. Sending students to the west as laborers was a perfect vehicle. Li Shizhens thought if a 1000 young Chinese workers traveled to France, they would make an enormous impact on Chinese society upon their return, imagine 140,000. In 1912 Li Shizhen alongside a group of other intellectuals, including a young Wang Jingwei formed the “Liu-Fa Jianxuhui” the Society for Frugal study in France. The major purpose of the society was to increase educational opportunities, to introduce Chinese to world civilizations, advanced learning and to develop a Chinese national economy. When the Chinese laborers saw what a western country looked like, how their citizens worked and lived, it had a profound effect on them. One laborer named Fu Shengsan, explained the situation in an article titled “ Hua gong zai fa yu zhou guo de sun yi” “Chinese Laborers in France and Their Contribution to the Motherland”for the Chinese laborers weekly. He wrote that Chinese laborers did not really understand the relationship between an individual and their nation, or between a family and a nation, before coming to the west. After witnessing Europeans fighting for their country in WW1, it aroused a sense of nationalism and patriotism amongst the Chinese. Many came back home trying to explain this knowledge. Fu would write that the belief Westerners were superior to Chinese was false and that China just needed to become strong like them. All of this would drive China towards the May fourth movement, a watershed moment in Modern Chinese history, but that is a story for another day. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. China underwent great hardship during the Great War, something I will be talking about in the next episode, but she also became a valued member of the Entente, and helped to win the war. Yet the experience of Chinese laborers would have a profound effect on the future of modern China, showing China's people they could rise to the occasion.
The Decembrists were driven by ideals of constitutionalism, liberal reforms, and a desire for a more participatory government but were defeated when Nicholas I ordered a cavalry charge and subsequent artillery attack using ...
Russia and China, the largest and most populous countries in the world, respectively, have maintained a delicate relationship for four centuries. In addition to a four-thousand-kilometer border, they have periodically shared a common outlook on political and economic affairs. But they are, in essence, profoundly different polities and cultures, and their intermittent alliances have proven difficult and at times even volatile. In China and Russia: Four Centuries of Conflict and Concord (Yale UP, 2023), Philip Snow provides a full account of the relationship between these two global giants. Looking at politics, religion, economics, and culture, Snow uncovers the deep roots of the two nations' alignment. We see the shifts in the balance of power, from the wealth and strength of early Qing China to the Tsarist and Soviet ascendancies, and episodes of intense conflict followed by harmony. He looks too at the experiences and opinions of ordinary people, which often vastly differed from those of their governments, and considers how long the countries' current amicable relationship might endure. Charles Coutinho, PH. D., Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House's International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Russia and China, the largest and most populous countries in the world, respectively, have maintained a delicate relationship for four centuries. In addition to a four-thousand-kilometer border, they have periodically shared a common outlook on political and economic affairs. But they are, in essence, profoundly different polities and cultures, and their intermittent alliances have proven difficult and at times even volatile. In China and Russia: Four Centuries of Conflict and Concord (Yale UP, 2023), Philip Snow provides a full account of the relationship between these two global giants. Looking at politics, religion, economics, and culture, Snow uncovers the deep roots of the two nations' alignment. We see the shifts in the balance of power, from the wealth and strength of early Qing China to the Tsarist and Soviet ascendancies, and episodes of intense conflict followed by harmony. He looks too at the experiences and opinions of ordinary people, which often vastly differed from those of their governments, and considers how long the countries' current amicable relationship might endure. Charles Coutinho, PH. D., Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House's International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
Russia and China, the largest and most populous countries in the world, respectively, have maintained a delicate relationship for four centuries. In addition to a four-thousand-kilometer border, they have periodically shared a common outlook on political and economic affairs. But they are, in essence, profoundly different polities and cultures, and their intermittent alliances have proven difficult and at times even volatile. In China and Russia: Four Centuries of Conflict and Concord (Yale UP, 2023), Philip Snow provides a full account of the relationship between these two global giants. Looking at politics, religion, economics, and culture, Snow uncovers the deep roots of the two nations' alignment. We see the shifts in the balance of power, from the wealth and strength of early Qing China to the Tsarist and Soviet ascendancies, and episodes of intense conflict followed by harmony. He looks too at the experiences and opinions of ordinary people, which often vastly differed from those of their governments, and considers how long the countries' current amicable relationship might endure. Charles Coutinho, PH. D., Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House's International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies
Russia and China, the largest and most populous countries in the world, respectively, have maintained a delicate relationship for four centuries. In addition to a four-thousand-kilometer border, they have periodically shared a common outlook on political and economic affairs. But they are, in essence, profoundly different polities and cultures, and their intermittent alliances have proven difficult and at times even volatile. In China and Russia: Four Centuries of Conflict and Concord (Yale UP, 2023), Philip Snow provides a full account of the relationship between these two global giants. Looking at politics, religion, economics, and culture, Snow uncovers the deep roots of the two nations' alignment. We see the shifts in the balance of power, from the wealth and strength of early Qing China to the Tsarist and Soviet ascendancies, and episodes of intense conflict followed by harmony. He looks too at the experiences and opinions of ordinary people, which often vastly differed from those of their governments, and considers how long the countries' current amicable relationship might endure. Charles Coutinho, PH. D., Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House's International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Russia and China, the largest and most populous countries in the world, respectively, have maintained a delicate relationship for four centuries. In addition to a four-thousand-kilometer border, they have periodically shared a common outlook on political and economic affairs. But they are, in essence, profoundly different polities and cultures, and their intermittent alliances have proven difficult and at times even volatile. In China and Russia: Four Centuries of Conflict and Concord (Yale UP, 2023), Philip Snow provides a full account of the relationship between these two global giants. Looking at politics, religion, economics, and culture, Snow uncovers the deep roots of the two nations' alignment. We see the shifts in the balance of power, from the wealth and strength of early Qing China to the Tsarist and Soviet ascendancies, and episodes of intense conflict followed by harmony. He looks too at the experiences and opinions of ordinary people, which often vastly differed from those of their governments, and considers how long the countries' current amicable relationship might endure. Charles Coutinho, PH. D., Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House's International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Russia and China, the largest and most populous countries in the world, respectively, have maintained a delicate relationship for four centuries. In addition to a four-thousand-kilometer border, they have periodically shared a common outlook on political and economic affairs. But they are, in essence, profoundly different polities and cultures, and their intermittent alliances have proven difficult and at times even volatile. In China and Russia: Four Centuries of Conflict and Concord (Yale UP, 2023), Philip Snow provides a full account of the relationship between these two global giants. Looking at politics, religion, economics, and culture, Snow uncovers the deep roots of the two nations' alignment. We see the shifts in the balance of power, from the wealth and strength of early Qing China to the Tsarist and Soviet ascendancies, and episodes of intense conflict followed by harmony. He looks too at the experiences and opinions of ordinary people, which often vastly differed from those of their governments, and considers how long the countries' current amicable relationship might endure. Charles Coutinho, PH. D., Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House's International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
Russia and China, the largest and most populous countries in the world, respectively, have maintained a delicate relationship for four centuries. In addition to a four-thousand-kilometer border, they have periodically shared a common outlook on political and economic affairs. But they are, in essence, profoundly different polities and cultures, and their intermittent alliances have proven difficult and at times even volatile. In China and Russia: Four Centuries of Conflict and Concord (Yale UP, 2023), Philip Snow provides a full account of the relationship between these two global giants. Looking at politics, religion, economics, and culture, Snow uncovers the deep roots of the two nations' alignment. We see the shifts in the balance of power, from the wealth and strength of early Qing China to the Tsarist and Soviet ascendancies, and episodes of intense conflict followed by harmony. He looks too at the experiences and opinions of ordinary people, which often vastly differed from those of their governments, and considers how long the countries' current amicable relationship might endure. Charles Coutinho, PH. D., Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House's International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We are republishing Alan Wood's series on the Russian Revolution as a podcast, originally released to mark the centenary of the greatest event in human history. To begin this series, Alan examines the events of the February Revolution, when the masses entered onto the scene of history to overthrow the hated Tsarist monarchy. In the space of days, a seemingly omnipotent regime was swept aside, and the workers and peasants of Russia began to form their own democratic organs in the shape of the soviets.
Today, The Two Mikes discussed Vladimir Putin and Russia with Rebekah Koffler. Mrs. Koffler was born in the Soviet Union and was educated at the Moscow University of Foreign Languages where she studied English and French and international affairs. Mrs. Koffler also is the author of the book Putin's Playbook: Russia's Secret Plan to Defeat America, which is available at Amazon and at many other booksellers. In the United States, Mrs. Koffler worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency and is the president of the firm Doctrine & Strategy Consulting, We covered multiple topics in our talk – including the fake coup staged by Prigozhin and his Wagner Group and Putin's ability to be ruthless – but the excellence of Mrs. Koffler's presentation was her description of how much the West is suffering from an apparently complete lack of knowledge of European and especially Russian history. The West, Mrs. Koffler said, does not seem to understand that Putin's Russia is not the Soviet Union. It is more akin to Tsarist regimes that the Bolsheviks' put an end to via a merciless revolution. Today's Russia is a nationalist-oriented and increasingly Christian nation-state. It also is a state that has been shaped by war and a primal fear of invasion. Ukraine's Nazi regime stirs Russian memories of the war against the Nazis and the loss of 30 million or more of their countrymen. More recently, Russians have seen the United States build dozens of chemical-weapons labs in Ukraine, and have heard Western leaders call for the removal of Putin and the break of Russia as a nation. The West also does not seem to recognize that everyday Russians know their own history and fear both revolution and invasion from the West. It also seems ignorant of Putin's personal popularity and the fact that Western sanctions have spectacularly failed and have boosted, not damaged, the country's economy. Mrs. Koffler's presentation is a convincing explanation of why the interventionist war being run by Biden's goofball administration and the Neocons will ultimately fail completely and cost the United States and Europe most dearly at home and internationally. SponsorsCARES Act Stimulus (COVID-19) Employee Retention Tax Credits (ERC): https://www.jornscpa.com/snap/?refid=11454757 Cambridge Credit: https://www.cambridge-credit.org/twomikes/ EMP Shield: https://www.empshield.com/?coupon=twomikes Our Gold Guy: https://www.ourgoldguy.com www.TwoMikes.usSubscribe to this show on Rumble and Apple Podcasts. For all of our shows and articles, please visit https://freedomfirstnetwork.com Sign up for pickax, the social media platform that protects free speech, is not beholden to Big Tech, has algorithms that amplify your voice and provides monetization opportunities for content creators. https://pickax.com Protect your wealth from the Biden-induced inflation. Buy gold from Our Gold Guy. https://ourgoldguy.com Start your day with a cup of freedom… Freedom First Coffee that is! It's 100% organic, fire-roasted and tastes like FREEDOM. https://freedomfirstcoffee.com Detox your body from heavy metals and toxins from the zeolite detox recommended by Dr Sherri Tenpenny! Click here for $50 off: https://freedomfirstnetwork.thegoodinside.com/pbx-trial-offer-10c2020/ Pre-order Jeff Dornik's book Following the Leader, which explains how the intelligence agencies use cult tactics to brainwash the masses and push propaganda through cult mentality. https://jeffdornik.com/ftl
As the year 1917 dawned, Europe had been at war for two and a half years, and pressures on the home fronts were becoming intolerable. Every participant nation came under huge strain.In Russia the Tsarist regime falls in March, but the interim government is unstable and itself falls in the famous October Revolution, led by Vladimir Lenin, who promises to withdraw Russia from the war.www.patreon.com/historyeuropewww.historyeurope.netMusic composed by Frederich Chopin (The Polish Dancer)Picture - Vladimir Lenin, 1 May 1920 by Isaak_BrodskyTheme tune for the podcast by Nico Vettese, www.wetalkofdreams.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
IN 1917, A RADIO BROADCAST IN RUSSIA announced that the Tsarist regime had been overthrown and a new Soviet government had been established. This was the first ever victory of Karl Marx's political ideology, which had now acquired an entire state for itself: the largest country in the world. Quite obviously, the event was enormously significant throughout the world and there was great excitement among Communists in non-communist countries. One such country was England's most prized colony, India. The Dharma Dispatch Digest is a reader-supported publication. To receive new podcast episodes and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.This podcast episode traces the nearly century-long history of Communism in India from its founding days up to the present time. Founded in 1920 in Tashkent by M.N. Roy, the Communist Party of India (CPI) has had a chequered legacy in India. Unarguably its influence, impact and consequences for the country have largely been destructive. This destruction has passed through several key stages but it has undeniably been a force of darkness and violence. Overall, Communism in India has calculatedly destroyed many important facets of the ancient Hindu spiritual culture and civilisation. Communist forces in India continue to work for the physical break-up of the Indian state by collaborating with the declared enemies of India. Communism has also been mainly responsible for why India was considered a third world country for more than six decades after it attained independence from the British. Although Communists exist in India as a political force only nominally in the present time, they have managed to infiltrate their ideology by masking it it clever verbiage and have succeeded in a nationwide capture of government and other public institutions. This podcast episode is one of its kind offering a capsule history of a century of Communism in India which covers all the major stages in its history. Happy listening!A Heartfelt AppealIf you liked this podcast, please consider making a donation of your choice to The Dharma Dispatch Podcasts so we can keep our content free and offer more such informative and insightful content to you, our valued audience.Click the button below to make a donation.Donate via UPI: thedharmadispatch@apl Get full access to The Dharma Dispatch Digest at thedharmadispatch.substack.com/subscribe
The Poland-based podcaster, writer, and international affairs analyst Mike Krupa joined The Two Mikes today for a wide-ranging discussion on current events. On Ukraine, Mr. Krupa said that it appears that the Ukrainian military is headed toward defeat and has so far lost 200,000-ro 250,000 dead soldiers, and another 300,000 wounded. He added that it seems clear that the support of NATO countries for the Ukraine war also is eroding, as the recent trips to China by Macron and the EU president to seek Beijing's help in bringing a negotiated end to the war show. Mr. Krupa added, however, that some Eastern European NATO states, including Poland's leaders, are still are driven by the memories of their former Soviet masters' savage misdeeds and are ready to continue backing Ukraine, not recognizing the stark difference between Bolshevik Russia and the neo-Tsarist, pro-Christian Putin government. They also seem not to recognize the clear fact that the war was caused by British and U.S. policies, actions, and greed, rather than by any other factors. All told, Mr. Krupa said that the EU is drifting toward what should have occurred after the fall of the USSR; namely the end of NATO and the construction of an EU-centric defense organization, for which France's Macron, at least, has shown a strong interest. Finally, the three of us shared no clear idea of why Finland accepted NATO membership. Clearly the Finnish leaders -- who dropped the country's long and highly beneficial policy of neutrality and failed to consult the country's people via a referendum on either ending neutrality and joining NATO. Finland has now knowingly put its head on Russia's chopping block as its geographical position is even more threatening to that country than was Ukraine's. It will be home to NATO bases, it is only slightly more than 200 air miles from St. Petersburg, and its northern territory puts it in a position to help NATO threaten Russian activities in the Arctic. Finland's 2022-2023 foreign policy can serve as a new and better definition of self-defeating geopolitical madness. Sponsors CARES Act Stimulus (COVID-19) Employee Retention Tax Credits (ERC): https://www.jornscpa.com/snap/?refid=11454757Cambridge Credit: https://www.cambridge-credit.org/twomikes/ EMP Shield: https://www.empshield.com/?coupon=twomikesOur Gold Guy: https://www.ourgoldguy.com www.TwoMikes.us
"The Ukrainian nation will emerge from this war more united and certain of its identity than at any other point in its modern history," writes Serhii Plokhy at the end of The Russo-Ukrainian War (Norton, 2023). But that's not all, says the man acclaimed by the Financial Times as “the world's foremost historian of Ukraine” - author of Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, and Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis. "Ukraine's successful resistance to Russian aggression is destined to promote Russia's own nation-building project. Russia and its elites now have little choice but to reimagine their country's identity by parting ways not only with the imperialism of the Tsarist past but also with the anachronistic model of a Russian nation consisting of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. By paying an enormous price in wealth and blood of its citizens, Ukraine is terminating the era of Russian dominance in a good part of eastern Europe and challenging Moscow's claim to primacy in the rest of the post-Soviet space". Serhii Plokhy is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard and director of the university's Ukrainian Research Institute. *The author's own book recommendations are The Zelensky Effect by Olga Onuch and Henry Hale (Hurst, 2022) and Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990 by Katja Hoyer (Allen Lane, 2023) Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the Twenty-Four Two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
"The Ukrainian nation will emerge from this war more united and certain of its identity than at any other point in its modern history," writes Serhii Plokhy at the end of The Russo-Ukrainian War (Norton, 2023). But that's not all, says the man acclaimed by the Financial Times as “the world's foremost historian of Ukraine” - author of Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, and Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis. "Ukraine's successful resistance to Russian aggression is destined to promote Russia's own nation-building project. Russia and its elites now have little choice but to reimagine their country's identity by parting ways not only with the imperialism of the Tsarist past but also with the anachronistic model of a Russian nation consisting of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. By paying an enormous price in wealth and blood of its citizens, Ukraine is terminating the era of Russian dominance in a good part of eastern Europe and challenging Moscow's claim to primacy in the rest of the post-Soviet space". Serhii Plokhy is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard and director of the university's Ukrainian Research Institute. *The author's own book recommendations are The Zelensky Effect by Olga Onuch and Henry Hale (Hurst, 2022) and Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990 by Katja Hoyer (Allen Lane, 2023) Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the Twenty-Four Two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
"The Ukrainian nation will emerge from this war more united and certain of its identity than at any other point in its modern history," writes Serhii Plokhy at the end of The Russo-Ukrainian War (Norton, 2023). But that's not all, says the man acclaimed by the Financial Times as “the world's foremost historian of Ukraine” - author of Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, and Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis. "Ukraine's successful resistance to Russian aggression is destined to promote Russia's own nation-building project. Russia and its elites now have little choice but to reimagine their country's identity by parting ways not only with the imperialism of the Tsarist past but also with the anachronistic model of a Russian nation consisting of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. By paying an enormous price in wealth and blood of its citizens, Ukraine is terminating the era of Russian dominance in a good part of eastern Europe and challenging Moscow's claim to primacy in the rest of the post-Soviet space". Serhii Plokhy is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard and director of the university's Ukrainian Research Institute. *The author's own book recommendations are The Zelensky Effect by Olga Onuch and Henry Hale (Hurst, 2022) and Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990 by Katja Hoyer (Allen Lane, 2023) Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the Twenty-Four Two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
"The Ukrainian nation will emerge from this war more united and certain of its identity than at any other point in its modern history," writes Serhii Plokhy at the end of The Russo-Ukrainian War (Norton, 2023). But that's not all, says the man acclaimed by the Financial Times as “the world's foremost historian of Ukraine” - author of Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, and Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis. "Ukraine's successful resistance to Russian aggression is destined to promote Russia's own nation-building project. Russia and its elites now have little choice but to reimagine their country's identity by parting ways not only with the imperialism of the Tsarist past but also with the anachronistic model of a Russian nation consisting of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. By paying an enormous price in wealth and blood of its citizens, Ukraine is terminating the era of Russian dominance in a good part of eastern Europe and challenging Moscow's claim to primacy in the rest of the post-Soviet space". Serhii Plokhy is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard and director of the university's Ukrainian Research Institute. *The author's own book recommendations are The Zelensky Effect by Olga Onuch and Henry Hale (Hurst, 2022) and Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990 by Katja Hoyer (Allen Lane, 2023) Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the Twenty-Four Two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science
"The Ukrainian nation will emerge from this war more united and certain of its identity than at any other point in its modern history," writes Serhii Plokhy at the end of The Russo-Ukrainian War (Norton, 2023). But that's not all, says the man acclaimed by the Financial Times as “the world's foremost historian of Ukraine” - author of Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, and Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis. "Ukraine's successful resistance to Russian aggression is destined to promote Russia's own nation-building project. Russia and its elites now have little choice but to reimagine their country's identity by parting ways not only with the imperialism of the Tsarist past but also with the anachronistic model of a Russian nation consisting of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. By paying an enormous price in wealth and blood of its citizens, Ukraine is terminating the era of Russian dominance in a good part of eastern Europe and challenging Moscow's claim to primacy in the rest of the post-Soviet space". Serhii Plokhy is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard and director of the university's Ukrainian Research Institute. *The author's own book recommendations are The Zelensky Effect by Olga Onuch and Henry Hale (Hurst, 2022) and Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990 by Katja Hoyer (Allen Lane, 2023) Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the Twenty-Four Two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs
"The Ukrainian nation will emerge from this war more united and certain of its identity than at any other point in its modern history," writes Serhii Plokhy at the end of The Russo-Ukrainian War (Norton, 2023). But that's not all, says the man acclaimed by the Financial Times as “the world's foremost historian of Ukraine” - author of Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, and Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis. "Ukraine's successful resistance to Russian aggression is destined to promote Russia's own nation-building project. Russia and its elites now have little choice but to reimagine their country's identity by parting ways not only with the imperialism of the Tsarist past but also with the anachronistic model of a Russian nation consisting of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. By paying an enormous price in wealth and blood of its citizens, Ukraine is terminating the era of Russian dominance in a good part of eastern Europe and challenging Moscow's claim to primacy in the rest of the post-Soviet space". Serhii Plokhy is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard and director of the university's Ukrainian Research Institute. *The author's own book recommendations are The Zelensky Effect by Olga Onuch and Henry Hale (Hurst, 2022) and Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990 by Katja Hoyer (Allen Lane, 2023) Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the Twenty-Four Two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
The people of Ukraine are facing down a military giant. Their unity and bravery in the bloody, cruel year since the Russia invasion are an inspiration to the rest of the world.Instead of talking about politics or the state of the war, we consider the battlefield of ideas. Above all this show is an attempt to put the war into context: What's at stake for Western democracy, and what space does Ukraine fit in our history? We speak again with Marci Shore, professor of European cultural & intellectual history at Yale University. She first appeared on "How Do We Fix It?" a year ago. In 2018 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship for her current book project, a history of phenomenology in East-Central Europe, tentatively titled “Eyeglasses Floating in Space: Central European Encounters That Came about While Searching for Truth.” Her most recent book is “The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution”. This show is a companion piece to episode #380 with Jacob Mchangama.We hear a very thoughtful, passionate account of the war. "These are my friends and colleagues who are being slaughtered," Marci Shore tell us."That is first and foremost why the war is so personal for me." She describes the war as "the decisive end of what Francis Fukuyama had called the end of history."Marci is Jewish, and a well-known scholar of Eastern Europe in the post-Soviet era. As a young child she listened to elderly relatives who had once been victims of Tsarist pogroms— riots aimed at expelling and killing Jews and other members of ethnic or religious groups in a region that includes present-day Ukraine. She tells us why "Ukraine has emerged as a subject and not an object in world consciousness."In this episode we also discuss the work of The Reckoning Project— a coalition of human rights activists, journalists and archivists who are using the power of story-telling and legal accountability to document truth. The project has uncovered evidence and is conducting first-person interviews about Russian abuses and cruelty in occupied parts of Ukraine. Recommendation: Jim is looking at the extraordinary work of photojournalist Lynsey Addario and others who risk their lives to capture vital moments during the wars. Her work photos have been published by The New York Times. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
One of the most significant events of the 20th century, the 1917 Russian Revolution saw the overthrow of the Tsar and the birth of a new communist era. So what exactly led up to Russia's historic and bloody transformation into the Soviet Union?In this episode, James is joined by renowned historian and author Sir Antony Beever at the very London pub where Vladimir Lenin and other exiled Russian revolutionaries plotted their overthrow of the Tsarist regime. Together, they reflect on the ideas, motivations, and actions of those who shaped the course of history from this very spot over 100 years ago.Sir Antony's new book on the Russian Revolution is available for pre-order here. For more Warfare content, subscribe to our Warfare newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Over the Christmas week we're doing things a little differently. Today is the second part of a special two part podcast on the life and works of Ukrainian poet, writer and artist, Taras Shevchenko.In the last episode, we heard about the historical period in which the young Shevchenko grew up. We heard about the boy who was born a serf but went to St Petersburg for his education.Lyubov spoke about his poetry and ended the episode with his arrest by the Tsarist powers. That's where we pick up his story. Contributors:David Knowles (Host). @DJKnowles22 on Twitter.Lyubov Tarashchuk (Researcher at the Taras Shevchenko Museum in Kyiv).Email: podcasts@telegraph.co.ukSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Synopsis OK, how's this for a movie scene worthy of “Doctor Zhivago” ... It's October 1917 and Lenin has overthrown the Tsarist government of Russia. A composer and virtuoso pianist can hear gunfire from his apartment as he works and decides that his family must flee their homeland. He receives an offer for recital appearances in Scandinavia and uses the offer as a pretext to escape Russia. But first the family must face a dangerous journey to Finland in trains crowded with terrified passengers. At the Finnish border, a music-loving Bolshevik guard recognizes the famous artist and allows the family safe passage. But wait – there are no more trains running, so they must travel to Helsinki in an open peasant sleigh during a raging blizzard. They arrive in Stockholm on Christmas Eve, and one year later the composer and his family are able to book passage from Oslo to New York. If that sounds perhaps a bit too melodramatic, consider that scenario is exactly what happened to Sergei Rachmaninoff, his wife, and two daughters. In America, Rachmaninoff became a star pianist, playing 92 concerts at Carnegie Hall between 1918 and 1943. He continued to compose, but lamented, “When I lost my homeland, I lost myself as well... I have no will to create without ... Russian soil under my feet.” He would complete only six more major works during his 25 years in America. Music Played in Today's Program Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) Piano Concerto No. 1 in f#, Op. 1 Krystian Zimerman, piano; Boston Symphony Orchestra; Seiji Ozawa, conductor. DG 4796868
Summary Jim Olson (Website) joins Andrew (Twitter; LinkedIn) to discuss Putin and Russia. He had a 31-year career with the CIA including a tour in Moscow. What You'll Learn Intelligence His views on Russia and its trajectory since the Cold War's end His frank assessment of Putin and admiration for the Russian people His time in Moscow with 3 rotating KGB teams surveilling him His time as Chief of Station in the city of spies Vienna Reflections A “beautiful marriage” with American technology Passing the generational baton And much, much more… Episode Notes “James Olson is a legend in the clandestine service,” not my description of this week's guest, but that of former CIA Director and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Jim spent 31 years in the CIA, including tours in Moscow, Vienna & Mexico City, and rose to become Chief of CIA Counterintelligence. He is the author of Fair Play and To Catch a Spy. He joined Andrew to speak about Russia. He speaks the language, spent time living and working in the country, where he was involved in one particularly daring operation that he shares with us in the episode, and he faced off against the organization that would go on to become the current SVR and FSB – the KGB. Jim has had Vladimir Putin on his radar for many a year, and he doesn't pull any punches reflecting on his trajectory in this episode. And… Jim grew up in a small town in Iowa where, “we didn't really follow international affairs, we joked among ourselves…if it didn't affect the price of corn, we weren't really interested.” My, how things changed for Jim. Quote of the Week "I have tremendous respect for the Russian people. They are long suffering. I've gotten to know many Russians. I've worked with a lot of Russians. I found them to be people who had a real soul. They had a human qualities that I could admire, but they were locked into a repressive regime that did not allow them to express any of those human sentiments that that they felt." – Jim Olson Resources Headline Resource To Catch a Spy: The Art of Counterintelligence, J. Olson (GUP, 2019) Fair Play: The Moral Dilemmas of Spying, J. Olson (Potomac, 2008) *SpyCasts* “The Spymaster's Prism” – with Jack Devine (2021) “Russians Among Us: The Hunt for Putin's Spies” – with Gordon Corera (2020) “The Corrupted State” – with Ilya Zaslavskiy (2016) “Putin's End Game in Ukraine” – with KGB General (Retd.) Oleg Kalugin (2014) Beginner Resources To Catch A Spy with J. Olson, C-SPAN (2020) [9:44 minutes] The Best Books on Counterintelligence, J. Olson, Shepherd (n.d.) Putin's Revisionist History of Russia and Ukraine, I. Chotiner, New Yorker (2022) Books Putin's People, C. Belton (Picador, 2022) Operative in the Kremlin, F. Hill & C. Gaddy (Brookings, 2015) One Soldier's War in Chechnya, A. Babchenko (Portobello, 2008) Articles Former CIA Leader Said LinkedIn is Like a Candy Store to China, C. Burgess, ClearanceJobs (2022) New Documentary Series Explores Pollard Affair, H. Brown, Jerusalem Post (2022) J. Olson First Recipient of “The Spirit of Aggieland – 41 Award,” J. Adams, KAGS (2022) Ex-CIA Chief on Accused Chinese Spymaster, P. Christian, WCPO (2021) Videos To Catch A Spy with J. Olson, Houston World Affairs Council (2020) Primary Sources James Collins Oral History, US Ambassador to Soviet Union, 1997-2001 (n.d.) Jack Matlock Oral History, US Ambassador to Soviet Union, 1987-1991, (n.d.) Ukraine: Memo. On Security Assurances (1994) Belovezha Accords, Eyewitness Account of Former Belarus Soviet Leader (1991) *Wildcard Resource* What Classic Russian Literature Can Teach us about Putin's War on Ukraine Putin is a big fan of Dostoevsky – who underwent a mock execution & four years of hard labor in Siberia for belonging to a literary discussion group feared by the Tsarist autocracy.
Geopolitical Strategist Peter Zeihan- The Myth of NATO Provocations, Food, Fuel and Russian Gold, Putin's Big Plan. The Myth of NATO Provocations Food, Fuel and Russian Gold Confronting A Geopolitical Strategist On Putin's Big Plan The Myth of NATO Provocations | Peter Zeihan https://youtu.be/gbr3CiOhTO8 51,691 views Apr 7, 2022 GEOPOP 53.6K subscribers The Myth of Justified Russian Retaliation by Peter Zeihan on April 7, 2022 There has been a persistent argument made by Russia apologists - unwitting or otherwise - that Moscow's invasion of Ukraine is the fault of the West. Or #NATO Or some combination, but with the United States ultimately bearing the brunt of responsibility. It isn't particularly new, either; #Russia and a whole constellation of international relations theorists and political scientists and peaceniks and Russia apologists have been making it for decades. I'm not confused by why it's happening. It's absolutely in Russia's interest to try and make the international community see its actions as reasonable and justified. I'm just confused that anyone believes it. At the crux of the argument is a belief that the violent party (in this instance, Russia) has to lash out, and that the victim, (here, #Ukraine )has somehow been asking for it. If this kind of framing makes your skin crawl, it should: Russia is an expansionist imperial power looking to justify its state violence against its neighbors by making it their fault. Which brings us to another inconvenient truth: those who decry NATO expansion, or are quick to believe Moscow's propaganda - that allowing former Soviet states to pursue a the path of free market democracies is a prelude to US military expansion - ignore Russian history. There is no conflict that Russian Vladimir Putin has participated in that doesn't have a Soviet or Tsarist analogue. Russia has been in a near constant state of war or military expansionism since the 1500s. This is partly explained by the insecurity of the Russian core's borders. NATO expansion didn't provide the reason or excuse for Moscow's current actions. But it does provide those in the way of Russian tanks the opportunity of collective self-defense. Second Clip is from Jordan Harbinger Podcast. listen to full interview here… https://www.jordanharbinger.com/peter... Follow Peter on Twitter... @PeterZeihan Sign up to his newsletters/ vlogs... https://zeihan.com/newsletter/ ______________________________ Food, Fuel and Russian Gold | Peter Zeihan Vlog on Russia https://youtu.be/gCWXwenv1BQ 26,907 views Apr 12, 2022 GEOPOP 53.7K subscribers #russia Russia, Rubles and #Gold by Peter Zeihan on April 12, 2022 The Russians are leaning on a tried and true mechanism of sanctioned economies: GOLD! I've heard from several corners that this somehow means the Russian ruble is now a gold-backed currency. This is simply not true. Nor does it mean that the Russian Central Bank - and, broadly speaking, the Russian economy - is not in a place of desperation. Russia is a hoarder of gold. Russia is also a significant producer and exporter of gold ores and boullion. Russia has the gold to prop up its currency for the short term, but instead the central bank is engaged in a very different game: replacing the ruble with an untraceable medium of trade. To do that the RCB needs more gold. A lot more. And so the Bank is competing with Russia's own citizens in buying gold and dumping the ruble. The task facing Russian Central Bank Chief Elvira Nabiullina - who I am on the record saying is likely the smartest central banker currently working in the world - is not an easy one. While the ruble's free fall was largely halted and corrected, Moscow must cover imports, fund its activities abroad, stabilize its currency, and find inventive ways to prop up strategic industries and secure whatever export income in can. All this in the face of the most comprehensive sanctions program in modern history. When Food and #energy Fuel Crises Meet by Peter Zeihan on April 12, 2022 The Biden Administration announced this morning that it was working with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to make changes to the laws regarding E15 fuel, or gasoline containing up to 15% ethanol. Retailers are allowed to sell an E10 blend (with up to 10% ethanol) year round, but E15 is usually banned from June 1 through September 15--peak automobile travel months in the United States. This is due primarily to concerns over the fuel's stability in higher temperatures and disputed data about E15's increased emissions and deleterious impact on air quality. The Biden administration's primarily goal here is to help reverse the climb of fuel prices across the United States, a trend that has been exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The White House estimates that the mix of ethanol in the US fuel supply should knock a few cents off a gallon at the pump. No disputes there. The issue comes that the US ethanol supply is made primarily from corn. (Some 40% of US corn production ultimately ends up as ethanol in E10 and E15 fuel blends.) We are currently seeing a global agricultural system that is facing serious increases in inputs from fuel to fertilizers, not to mention a global food crisis stemming from a war between two of the world's largest grain exporters. Confronting A Geopolitical Strategist On Putin's Big Plan https://youtu.be/pdP01go8wdQ 65,537 views Apr 7, 2022 THE JORDAN HARBINGER SHOW 66.1K subscribers Geopolitical strategist and author of The Absent Superpower, The Accidental Superpower, Disunited Nations, and the upcoming The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization. Subscribe to the podcast: http://jordanharbinger.com/subscribe Full show notes can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/640 What We Discuss with Peter Zeihan: 0:00 - Intro 0:05 - Why Putin is invading Ukraine 11:54 - The weakness of the Russian army 14:36 - The Russian rail core 18:05 - How to defeat Russia while avoiding total destruction 22:35 - Putin is probably the last leader of Russia (what happens after he's gone) 36:52 - How Russia's collapse can inform China's downfall 43:38 - China's impending invasion into Taiwan 52:18 - Russia's civilian infrastructure destruction campaign strategy 53:43 - The Russian Ukrainian war is NATO's fault 1:02:20 - Why your groceries are about to get more expensive (food shortage) The Vladimir Putin-led invasion of Ukraine has been an ominous threat to the Western world for years. Now that it's fully under way and being met with stiffer Ukrainian resistance than the Russians were expecting, the reasons for Putin's continued aggression in the face of monumental losses, mounting sanctions from the rest of the world, and the unexpected solidarity of the West seem ill-advised. What does Putin see for the road ahead that we in the West do not? On this episode, we discuss the developing situation with Peter Zeihan, a geopolitical strategist and author of The Absent Superpower, The Accidental Superpower, Disunited Nations, and the upcoming The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization. Here, we examine how the current Russia-Ukraine conflict became a “now or never” option for Putin, the downsides for Russia if it “wins” and what we expect its next steps to be, what NATO is doing to avoid turning this into a nuclear-escalated World War III, why Putin's actions leading up to this point in time don't bode well for Russia in any scenario, and what a country like China with expansionist goals of its own might take away from Russia's hard-earned lessons. Listen, learn, and enjoy! Get the BEST highlights from each episode on our clips channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-cx... Want to watch more in-depth interviews with some of the world's most amazing and successful people? Find full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNbAQ... Welcome to The Jordan Harbinger Show, a video podcast where each week you get to join a conversation with some of the world's highest performers and incredible personalities. I'll ask them the tough questions to tease out their top tips so that you can reach levels of personal growth and mastery that you never imagined possible. Learn more about Jordan: http://jordanharbinger.com/about
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