In this thesis, I examine both internal and external pressures Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) experienced prior to their defection and while in captivity. I discuss several driving factors, such as Soviet propaganda tactics, pre-deployment military training, quality of life in A…
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In the interwar period, the Soviet Union and Turkey embarked on an unprecedented partnership, characterized by high profile economic, diplomatic, and cultural exchanges. The enthusiasm of these interactions surprised contemporaneous foreign observers and contemporary scholars al…
This study arose from the desire to research the effectiveness of state building policies in Afghanistan. In order to address this topic, I review state building literature and find that state building literature focuses largely on the processes of democratization instead of ins…
Whether the Soviets succeeded or failed in their efforts to transform Central Asian societies is one of the central questions that continues to preoccupy scholars of this region. Soviet leaders manipulated the position and status of women to meet their ideological and economic g…
In recent years, historians have argued that the Soviet Union was a “maker of nations.” The Soviet state fostered incipient nation-statehood among its non-Russian minorities through the establishment of national territories, the promotion of native elites and languages, and the …
Due to a worldwide escalating prevalence of migration, there has been an ever-increasing interest in studying language contact phenomena both at the social and individual level, where research on language maintenance and shift holds a prominent position. The present study explor…
This dissertation examines the role of the American Jewish community in achieving the mass exodus of Soviet Jews during the Gorbachev period, 1985–1991. It reviews the dynamics of American Jewry's decisive part during these critical years for Soviet Jewry, when over one million …
This dissertation traces the evolution of modern medical institutions alongside that of Russian and Soviet policies towards indigenous Central Asians, from the establishment of the Imperial colony through the mid-1930s. Based on two years of archival research in Uzbekistan and R…
Historical narratives played an important role in the undermining of Soviet rule in Armenia during the final years of the Soviet Union. Competing, non-Communist interpretations of history influenced large segments of the population, which in turn led to a “divorce from Sovietism…
Work was the dominant activity of prisoners in Russia for most of the twentieth century and was justified according to the philosophies prevalent in Tsarist and Soviet society. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, no specific ideology has emerged. Consequently, there …
This thesis investigates the formation of power structures in a revolutionary setting. It takes as a case study the central Siberian city of Krasnoiarsk, in which a powerful Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies emerged during the period March-October 1917. The Krasnoiarsk S…
Multiculturalism Versus "Multi-national-ness " revisits the encounters of American writers with Soviet nationalities policy—Moscow's promise of a class-based solution to racial prejudice, coupled with its promotion of minority languages and cultures. The project revolves around …
When looking for a time and place to pin down when and where the Cold War began, historians have often selected the Iran Crisis of 1945-1946. Seen from the point of view of Washington, the Iran Crisis was a good starting point from which to trace patterns of Soviet expansion and…
This thesis analyzes the evolution of national thinking in Azerbaijani literature of the Soviet period from 1920 to 1990. The impact of Soviet policies and ideology on the structure, form and content of this literature will be discussed along with the presentation of samples of …
This dissertation explores Soviet efforts to transform the social and physical landscape of the USSR. It looks at the process of building socialism through the prism of urban development in Tashkent, the multi-ethnic capital of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. It shows how S…
The Twelfth World Festival of Youth and Students that took place in Moscow in 1985 has largely been forgotten, but historical analysis of the event reveals that it had significant implications for the Soviet Union and Cold War. This thesis argues that the festival was a public c…
This dissertation, “M.G. (aka I Want a Baby! Reimagined),” is a scholarly and artistic examination of Sergei Tret’iakov’s play Хочу ребëнка (I Want a Baby!), originally written in 1926. Central to Tret’iakov’s plot is Milda Grignau, a cultural worker dedicated to building a coll…
After the close of World War II, the Soviet Union sponsored a so-called “repatriation” campaign to assist diaspora Armenians in migrating to what was crafted and perceived to be their “true” ancestral homeland – the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR). Between 1946-1949, n…