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By analyzing the Soviet Politburo's decrees, I seek to reconstruct the blueprint that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) devised for organizing the post-World War II Korean provisional government. The CPSU obstructed the antitrusteeship forces' participation in the US-USSR Joint Commission, aiming to establish a government dominated by the left. Under the Soviet Union's suggested arrangement, the provisional government could exercise legislative and administrative authority only under the Commission's control. Despite believing that rule under a trusteeship would best secure Korea's autonomy, the Soviets did not specify a process for Korea's transition to complete independence.

The child of a small coup rather than an extension of popular will, the Soviet State was intrinsically insecure, its leaders ever fearful of internal and external threats. They did not feel that their regime would be safe until the revolution triumphed abroad, convinced that the outside world was implacably hostile. None felt this more strongly than Stalin. Indeed, as eminent historian of the Soviet Union Vojtech Mastny argues, it was Stalin’s insatiable craving for security, more than anything else, that was the root cause of East-West tensions and the Cold War. In The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity, the long-awaited sequel to his acclaimed work, Russia’s Road to the Cold War, Mastny offers a masterful history of the birth of the Cold War, drawing on extensive research in newly opened Soviet archives. Here Stalin takes centre stage during the critical years 1947 to 1953, stamping East-West tensions with his personal blend of paranoia, ideology, ruthlessness, and wishful thinking. Indeed, given Stalin’s personality and his unquenchable thirst for security, Mastny argues, the Cold War arose as an “unexpected but predetermined” event--far from planned, yet scarcely avoidable. As Mastny unfolds the history of this climactic era, he offers a new understanding of important aspects of the developing conflict--throwing sharp light, for example, on the Kremlin’s relationship with foreign Communist parties (in both Eastern and Western Europe) and its very different responses to Tito and Mao. Indeed, the break with Tito demonstrates the depths of Stalin’s paranoia: the Yugoslav leader actually thought he was doing Stalin’s will, when all along his very similarity to Stalin alienated the Soviets--a case of “incompatible affinities,” as Mastny writes. Here too is a fresh view of the outbreak of the Korean War: Stalin not only approved the attack, he actively armed and prepared the North’s Communist army. And yet, he strangely left the most crucial war decisions to the North Koreans. Mastny brilliantly analyses these events, showing the impact of the fighting in Korea on European relations--especially the question of divided Germany. And throughout the volume, Mastny offers many thought-provoking observations--he shows, for instance, that U.S. covert operations (especially the attempted infiltration of armed agents into Eastern Europe) may have had greater historical impact, by reinforcing Stalin’s paranoia, than the better-known Soviet espionage efforts in the West; and that the West’s failure to exploit instability--especially in East Germany--after Stalin’s death, may have allowed a shaky Soviet regime to regain its footing and survive for another forty years. Russia’s Road to the Cold War provided the definitive portrait of Stalin’s foreign policy during World War II. Now, in The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity, Mastny provides an equally superb account of Stalin’s foreign policy during his last years. Combining important new research with the fascinating insight of one of the leading authorities on Soviet affairs, this authoritative volume illuminates a crucial period in recent world history.

The GAMMA-400 gamma-ray telescope currently under development is designed to measure fluxes of gamma rays and electron-positron cosmic-ray components, which could be associated with the annihilation or decay of dark matter particles, and to survey in detail the celestial sphere in order to search for and investigate discrete gamma-ray sources; to measure the energy spectra of Galactic and extragalactic dif- fuse gamma-ray emissions; and to study gamma-ray bursts and the gamma-ray emissions of active Sun. The GAMMA-400 energy range is 100 MeV to 3000 GeV. The gamma-ray telescope has an angular resolution of ∼0.01°, an energy resolution of ∼1%, and a proton rejection factor of ∼10 6 . The GAMMA-400 will be installed on Russia’s Navigator space platform. Observations are planned to commence in 2018.

The fraction of positrons in the electron-positron component of cosmic rays is calculated in a scenario where electrons and positrons are generated by Galactic sources with the same spectral index. It is shown that the proposed scenario allows us to reproduce the existing experimental data on the fraction of positrons if the relative yield of positrons in a source is e + / e − ≈ 0.3.

Experimental and calculation data on γ-ray-hadron families, obtained using X-ray emulsion chambers at superhigh energies ( E 0 ≳ 10 15 eV) in stratospheric and high-mountain investigations of cosmic rays, are discussed. Relations between model characteristics and experimental data on the transverse size and alignment of the most energetic subcores in γ- h families are considered. Lateral characteristics of γ-ray families are shown to be independent of secondary particles 〈 p t 〉 in h-A interactions but are strongly determined by the p t ( x Lab ) dependence at 0.05 ≲ x Lab ≲ 0.20. Conclusions on properties of h-A interactions at superhigh energies are drawn.

It is shown that experimental data on the electromagnetic structure functions of a nucleon in the kinematic region of low x can be described in terms of a two-component approach in which the nonperturbative part of photon-nucleon interaction is described in terms of a updated variant of the generalized model of vector dominance that includes the radial excitations of mesons and off-diagonal elements of the matrix of meson-nucleon scattering. The perturbative component is described using the color-dipole model.

Results from the experimental search for and identification of tracks from the superheavy and transuranium nuclei of galactic cosmic rays in pallacite olivine crystals, conducted as part of project OLIMPIA [1], are presented. To date, 170 crystals from Marjalahti and Eagle Station pallacites have been processed and 6800 tracks corresponding to nuclei with charges Z > 55 have been found; 45 of these are from nuclei with charges of 88 < Z < 92 and three super-long ones were produced by nuclei with Z > 105. The charge of one of these nuclei is estimated in the first approximation as Z = 119(+10,−6). Our data confirm the hypothesis of islands of stability for natural trans-Fermi nuclei.

The PAMELA experiment is being conducted aboard the Russian satellite Resurs-DK 1, which was launched into a near-Earth circumpolar orbit on June 15, 2006. The instrument, which includes a magnetic spectrometer and an electromagnetic calorimeter (16 X 0 ), allows us to measure the fluxes of cosmic-ray electrons and positrons over a wide range of energies from ∼100 MeV to hundreds of GeV. This work presents the measurement data collected from July 2006 through January 2010 on the spectra of primary cosmic-ray electrons and positrons. At low energies, this spectrum is in good agreement with a diffusion model that includes reacceleration and damping. At high energies, the measured spectrum is harder than the one predicted.

Mr. Bevin records M. Gousev's enquiries concerning his attitude towards Moscow Conference

Refers to No. 270 and urges Anglo-American riposte to Soviet pressure in Near East