Explore the vast range of titles available.

Article Type: Research paper Purpose-The purpose of this article is to analyze evolutionary patterns in the institution of political officers in North Korea. Design, Methodology, Approach-Using archival sources and interviews with former KPA officers, this article studies the evolutionary patterns in the institution of political officers in North Korea. The methodology employed here is thus archival and oral historical research. To classify and analyze the institution, the article offers a typology in which the authority of the officers within their unit is used as the main criteria. As the research shows, in 1958 and 1969 Pyongyang introduced sweeping reforms to the institution, while in the 1980s a series of events at the top of the DPRK resulted in the birth of the current command arrangement, which, while quite convoluted, has proven itself to be a stable one. The article argues that the key two issues motivating the North Korean leadership were coup-proofing and the effectiveness of the military. Findings-Although originally implemented by the Soviet Union, the institution experienced at least two major reforms in 1958 and in 1969, during which Pyongyang attempted to introduce coup-proofing mechanisms at a cost of military effectiveness. Despite most of the previous research assuming that the 1969 reform set the modern command arrangement, this is not so. The modern shape of the institution originated in the 1980s, not in 1969, as the effective result of a compromise between various goals of the North Korean elite actors. Practical Implications-The modern North Korean army does not have a standard chain of command. Partially due to path dependency and partially due to ideology, the evolution of the institution described in the article has resulted in a hectic and convoluted system, which has a significant negative impact on the way this army functions and would hinder its effectiveness in the event of an armed conflict. Originality, Value-The topic has received barely, if any, coverage in English language research. A significant number of sources introduced here are completely new to the academic community. The changes to the institution of the 1980s, instrumental to the understanding of the modern KPA, have been practically uncovered even by the South Korean academic community, let alone the international one.

The waning influence of Christianity in the United Kingdom’s armed forces since 1960 and the growing ignorance of personnel who have ties to a particular denomination, gave rise to a new assessment of the military chaplain in a modern and postmodern context. This article gives an overview of the practice during the two world wars and after the 1960s. It also gives an overview of the debate on the current role of the military chaplain, especially the beliefs of Herspring, Zahn, Coleman and McCormack, and eventually set up a role model from a Free Church perspective. It is shown that an operating model that is only defined in pastoral terms does not satisfy. The pastoral and spiritual definition, in terms of a liminal serving as an alternative, is suggested because it frees the chaplain to act more independent and also describes the best practice that has always prevailed in the British army.

Introduction. The paper is devoted to the issues of cooperation in 1919-1922 between the Soviet State security agencies and scandalous representative of the extreme right wing of the Orthodox clergy, former hieromonk Iliodor (S. M. Trufanov). Analysis of this plot will help supplement our ideas about the policy of the Soviet State in the religious issue during the Civil War. Materials and methods. The paper is based mainly on the unpublished documents stored in the Central Archive of the Federal Security Service of Russia and in the State Archives of the Volgograd Region. The system of research procedures used in the published work, based on historical-genetic, historical-systemic and concrete historical methods, enabled the author to convincingly reconstruct the plans of the сhekists towards Iliodor. Analysis. In the autumn of 1919, it became obvious to the country’s leadership that it would not be possible to ensure victory on the anti-religious front without direct interference by the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (hereinafter – the Cheka) in the personnel policy of the Orthodox Russian Church. The variants of promotion to the leading church posts of those hierarchs who were ready to cooperate with the chekists were discussed. Results. Thus, the Soviet State sought to achieve the transformation of the Church into an institution controlled from the outside. However, in the future the Bolsheviks were not needed by Church, neither in the old nor in the updated form. That is why the Cheka intended to use Iliodor to destroy the unity of the ranks of the Orthodox Russian Church, but was not ready (even for the sake of achieving this goal) to seriously support his proposals to the creation of a “renewed people’s church” and to the organization of a broad network of religious communes.

At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. government enlisted the aid of a select group of psychologists, sociologists, and political scientists to blueprint enemy behavior. Not only did these academics bring sophisticated concepts to what became a project of demonizing communist societies, but they influenced decision-making in the map rooms, prison camps, and battlefields of the Korean War and in Vietnam. With verve and insight, Ron Robin tells the intriguing story of the rise of behavioral scientists in government and how their potentially dangerous, \"American\" assumptions about human behavior would shape U.S. views of domestic disturbances and insurgencies in Third World countries for decades to come. Based at government-funded think tanks, the experts devised provocative solutions for key Cold War dilemmas, including psychological warfare projects, negotiation strategies during the Korean armistice, and morale studies in the Vietnam era. Robin examines factors that shaped the scientists' thinking and explores their psycho-cultural and rational choice explanations for enemy behavior. He reveals how the academics' intolerance for complexity ultimately reduced the nation's adversaries to borderline psychotics, ignored revolutionary social shifts in post-World War II Asia, and promoted the notion of a maniacal threat facing the United States. Putting the issue of scientific validity aside, Robin presents the first extensive analysis of the intellectual underpinnings of Cold War behavioral sciences in a book that will be indispensable reading for anyone interested in the era and its legacy.

Land-locked between its giant neighbors, Russia and China, Mongolia was the first Asian country to adopt communism and the first to abandon it. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, Mongolia turned to international financial agencies—including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank—for help in compensating for the economic changes caused by disruptions in the communist world. Modern Mongolia is the best-informed and most thorough account to date of the political economy of Mongolia during the past decade. In it, Morris Rossabi explores the effects of the withdrawal of Soviet assistance, the role of international financial agencies in supporting a pure market economy, and the ways that new policies have led to greater political freedom but also to unemployment, poverty, increasingly inequitable distribution of income, and deterioration in the education, health, and well-being of Mongolian society. Rossabi demonstrates that the agencies providing grants and loans insisted on Mongolia's adherence to a set of policies that did not generally take into account the country's unique heritage and society. Though the sale of state assets, minimalist government, liberalization of trade and prices, a balanced budget, and austerity were supposed to yield marked economic growth, Mongolia—the world's fifth-largest per capita recipient of foreign aid—did not recover as expected. As he details this painful transition from a collective to a capitalist economy, Rossabi also analyzes the cultural effects of the sudden opening of Mongolia to democracy. He looks at the broader implications of Mongolia's international situation and considers its future, particularly in relation to China.

This article analyses the function of political commissars in the Republican Popular Army during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–9. It evaluates the commissariat's role in fostering soldiers' political engagement with the war, as well as the challenges maintaining morale and discipline in a revolutionary army. It also examines the complex relationship between commissars and Republican soldiers, and considers political divisions within the commissariat, particularly the rise and domination of delegates affiliated to the Communist Party of Spain. The article argues that commissars were a central component of the Republic's relatively successful, and heavily improvised, politicized wartime mobilization in the face of considerable challenges.

In the spring of 1945, as the Allied victory in Europe was approaching, the shape of the postwar world hinged on the personal politics and flawed personalities of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. Roosevelt's Lost Alliances captures this moment and shows how FDR crafted a winning coalition by overcoming the different habits, upbringings, sympathies, and past experiences of the three leaders. In particular, Roosevelt trained his famous charm on Stalin, lavishing respect on him, salving his insecurities, and rendering him more amenable to compromise on some matters.

In the article based on the published and unpublished sources were defined activities of a member of the Central Committee of the RCP(b), Commissar for Nationalities, the future Secretary-General of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) J. V. Stalin after being wounded leader of the world revolution V. I. Lenin (August 30, 1918). At the head of the party-state mechanism appeared Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Council, the first Soviet parliament, and the head of the Secretariat of the Bolshevik's Central Committee Y. M. Sverdlov, called himself \"the Chairman of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party\" and the chairman of Military Heist Council--Military Revolutionary Council of the Republic L. D. Trotsky. J. V. Stalin quarreled with Y. M. Sverdlov long before the October Revolution--in the period of reference in the joint Turukhansk region, and recent actions in Tsaritsyn finally alienated L. D. Trotsky. So coming to power Y. M. Sverdlov and L. D. Trotsky led to J. V. Stalin's loss of a sufficiently high status in the Bolshevik Party. J. V. Stalin uninvited appeared at the center, not failing to make fun of the old comrades in exile. The charges stemmed from a policy Y. M. Sverdlov against the Cossacks, one of the first steps to a massive red terror against the Cossacks, announced by the Organising Bureau of the Central Committee of RCP(b) in 1919. Appearing in the center, J. V. Stalin did everything to neutralize the powerful tandem and return full power to the leader of the world revolution. Without an understanding of these events it is impossible to study inner-party struggle in the RCP(b) in the second half of 1918--beginning of 1919.

Land-locked between its giant neighbors, Russia and China, Mongolia was the first Asian country to adopt communism and the first to abandon it. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, Mongolia turned to international financial agencies-including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank-for help in compensating for the economic changes caused by disruptions in the communist world.Modern Mongoliais the best-informed and most thorough account to date of the political economy of Mongolia during the past decade. In it, Morris Rossabi explores the effects of the withdrawal of Soviet assistance, the role of international financial agencies in supporting a pure market economy, and the ways that new policies have led to greater political freedom but also to unemployment, poverty, increasingly inequitable distribution of income, and deterioration in the education, health, and well-being of Mongolian society. Rossabi demonstrates that the agencies providing grants and loans insisted on Mongolia's adherence to a set of policies that did not generally take into account the country's unique heritage and society. Though the sale of state assets, minimalist government, liberalization of trade and prices, a balanced budget, and austerity were supposed to yield marked economic growth, Mongolia-the world's fifth-largest per capita recipient of foreign aid-did not recover as expected. As he details this painful transition from a collective to a capitalist economy, Rossabi also analyzes the cultural effects of the sudden opening of Mongolia to democracy. He looks at the broader implications of Mongolia's international situation and considers its future, particularly in relation to China.