„Siege der Freiheit,welche die Menschen durch die Erforschung des Grundes der Dinge errangen”︁ Wandlungen im politischen Selbstverständnis deutscher Naturwissenschaftler des 19. Jahrhunderts

“Victories of Freedom which Humans Achieved by Research in the Foundation of Things”. - This article analyzes the political self-conception of leading representatives of the natural sciences in 19th century Germany. It is argued that the main feature of this self-conception which remained constant over the time consisted in a strong “rationalization-imperative”, i.e. the postulate that state and society have to be reshaped on the basis of natural science. On the other hand, this imperative was put forward in very different forms and with different political content: it shifted from revolutionary aspirations in the period of 1848 to moderate and sometimes even reactionary positions in the last decades of the century.     

Transnational Constructors of Parliamentary Democracy in Swedish and Finnish Constitutional Controversies, 1917–1919

During the First World War, the legitimacy of established polities was challenged everywhere in Europe. Not only the combatant great powers but also smaller states witnessed a resurgence of constitutional disputes and competing ideological conceptualizations of revolution and reform, the will of the people, democracy, and parliamentarism. While these controversies primarily focused on the future of the national polities concerned, historical experiences and discourses accelerated by the war and the Russian Revolution were transnationally interconnected and contributed to discursive transfers between political cultures. Swedish and Finnish socialists were linked by their internationals, liberals were connected by transnational debates for and against ‘Western’ democracy and parliamentarism, and conservative politicians and academics were involved in ideologically oriented networks. This article reconstructs transnational links and discourses in order to understand the exceptionally confrontational dynamics (which, in Finland, partly led to a civil war) and the outcomes of the Swedish and Finnish constitutional debates in 1917–1919. It examines the nature of the transnational connections of eight Swedish and Finnish conservatives, liberals, revisionist socialists, and far-Left socialists, analysing their argumentation on constitutional questions in published works and parliamentary speeches as illustrative examples of the political groups they represented.     

Not About Land,Not Quite a Grab: Dispersed Dispossession in Rural Russia

In most literature in geography and agrarian studies, rural dispossession is neatly related to land rights or access, a trend that increased with debates about the recent wave of farmland investments worldwide. Drawing on long‐term fieldwork in rural Russia, this paper critiques that focus and the assumed nexus between rural dispossession and farmland, as is prevents an understanding of more dispersed stakes, modes and temporalities of dispossession. I introduce the concept of dispersed dispossession which advances our understanding of social and relational objects of dispossession beyond natural resources (such as sustaining institutions and infrastructures), and the tangled, complex, often slow and silent modes and temporalities of dispossession beyond spectacular events. I show how the concept sheds new light on current agrarian change in Russia, and how it contributes to debates on (rural) dispossession and “land grabs” more generally.     

建国初期"联苏抗美"国防战略思路论析

建国初期"联苏抗美"的国防战略是"一边倒"外交战略的延伸,但不能将两者混淆。"一边倒"外交战略着眼点在于社会制度的一致和意识形态的价值取向,"联苏抗美"的国防战略着眼于国家安全和国防巩固,它的提出既有历史经验的因素,更取决于新中国国家安全环境;它经受了历史的检验,证明是一个符合当时新中国国家安全利益的正确的决策,应给予充分的肯定。     

"文革"中的知识青年上山下乡运动研究述评

"文革"中的知青上山下乡运动是当代中国的重大事件之一.中外学者对这场运动进行了深入的探讨研究,取得了不少成果,发表了一批论文及专著,整理和公布了许多资料,目前在许多问题上已达成共识,与此同时也存在很大分歧,如关于"文革"中的知识青年上山下乡运动的基本动因问题、历史进程及其评价问题,对知青"返城风"及上山下乡运动终止原因等等,这些都有待研究者进行深入细致的研究.此外,在研究中还存在资料收集困难、研究力量薄弱、研究方法单一等困难与不足.     

Solidarity within limits: Interkit and the evolution of the Soviet Bloc’s Indochina policy, 1967–1985

This article examines how Interkit, the Soviet-controlled ‘anti-China International’, evaluated the development of Sino-Indochinese relations, and which contribution the Vietnamese and Laotian delegations made to the forum’s meetings. It investigates how the various shifts in Sino-Soviet and Soviet-US relations enhanced or reduced Vietnam’s relative importance in Soviet strategy. It describes how the Kremlin sought to dissuade its East European satellites from responding to Beijing’s overtures by presenting the Sino-Vietnamese conflict as evidence of China’s belligerence, and examines the ideological linkage between Soviet superpower hegemony over Eastern Europe and Vietnamese regional hegemony over Indochina.     

The Voyage of the Shilka: The Bolshevik Revolution Comes To Seattle, 1917

This article explores the questions and intrigue arising from the appearance of the Russian ship Shilka at the port of Seattle in December 1917. The first Russian vessel to reach American shores since the Bolshevik seizure of power, the Shilka raised both local and national fears of collusion between Soviet agitators and domestic radicals, especially the militant Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The article challenges the conclusions of an earlier article which argued against any substantive contact or understanding between the Russian seamen and locals. Relying on the memoirs of a Bolshevik crew member, the recollections of Seattle radicals and the reports of US Bureau of Investigation and Naval Intelligence agents, this article instead demonstrates the genuine presence of Bolshevik agitators and propaganda aboard the Shilka and their secret interaction with IWW activists. It also reveals a leak on the Russian end, a leak that both stimulated and perplexed American investigators.     

Buddhism,Democracy and Power in the 1932 Thai Revolution

The People’s Party toppled the Siamese absolute monarchy and introduced constitutional democracy in Thailand in June 1932. Scholars have generally denied that the revolution had any popular resonance, but this article shows that in Buddhism, the country’s premier cultural form, democratic rhetoric in the 1930s resonated among young monks marginalised by the ecclesiastical hierarchy. A group of young monks within the Mahanikai, or Great Order, rebelled against the palace-established Thammayut order that exercised the most power in institutional Buddhism. A “thin” or formal democracy established in 1932 – one displaying the main trappings of a regime of popular sovereignty but purposefully limited in scope by the People’s Party – thus inspired an assertion of a “thick” democracy, or democracy as a much older social value that governed both the Sangha internally and its relations with local communities, which the Mahanikai activists claimed was the core of original Buddhism.