THE EVOLUTION OF THE WILLY BRANDT`S SOVIET UNION IMAGE (original) (raw)
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Diplomacy & Statecraft, 2020
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ПОЛИТЕИА, 2020
The aim of this paper is to show to what extent and by what mechanisms the United States influenced the political formation of the personality and activities of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt. Special emphasis was placed on American influences during the implementation of Brandt's most famous political concept, 'Eastern Politics', which provides the chronological context of the development of relations in line with pan-European and world political movements and their correlation with Brandt's political path in exile and later in occupied Germany, and, finally, in the newly created independent Federal Republic of Germany. Circumstances, personal (dis)inclinations, and mutual influences gave birth to a rather ambivalent relationship, created mainly due to the interests of both parties, which overlapped in certain periods of time, while later they moved away and became cold, even often hostile.
Willy Brandt, Groping toward Détente
Diplomatic History, 2008
To scholars of the Cold War, détente in Germany is commonly asso with a brief, pregnant phrase coined by Egon Bahr in July 1963: Wand Annäherung, "change through rapprochement." Bahr's reasoning is so f that it can seem, in retrospect, utterly banal. Rather than brusquely rej dealings with the East German regime, Western leaders should constr engage their Eastern counterparts. Only after they ceased to fear the W existential threat would Communist functionaries feel comfortable int the kind of internal liberalization that might, in the long run, yield fund transformation.1 The counterintuitive, dialectic nature of Bahr's prop accepting the status quo in order to overcome it-greatly enhanced its tual appeal in the 1960s. But do Bahr's ideas really suffice as a shorthand of West German Ostpolitik? Was Willy Brandt merely the executor o
Western Marxist Interpretation of the Soviet Union: Between Hostility and Neutrality
Critique: Journal of Soicalist Theory 39(3): 443-452, 2011
Western Marxism and the Soviet Union: a Survey of Critical Theories and Debates since 19172 focuses on the Western Marxist interpretation of the Soviet Union in a historical context. Van der Linden categorized the various interpretations under four broad theoretical approaches. The theory of state capitalism insisted that the Soviet mode of production was a specific stage of capitalism. On the other hand, the Trotskyist theory of the degenerated workers’ state indicates that, even though the working class owned the means of production in the Soviet Union, it was deformed by the ascendancy and hegemony of bureaucracy. Nevertheless, this theory rejects the thesis that the Soviet bureaucracy was a coherent and self-perpetuated ruling class. The theory of the new mode of production with a consolidated ruling class generally characterized the Soviet society as a non-socialist and non-capitalist new mode of production, and bureaucracy formed a ruling class. This new ruling class was sui generis different from the previous ruling classes in the sense that it was not the possessor of the means of production. However, it expropriated the surplus value. The theory of the new mode of production without a consolidated ruling class, on the other hand, asserted that, instead of a new ruling class, the elite, which comprised a coalition of state managers, technical work force and bureaucrats, maintained hegemony over the Soviet working class. Moreover, van der Linden’s book also coveres a long list of writers who do not belong to any theoretical approach but had significant repercussions for the development of these approaches to a certain degree. Covering a wide range of views and having a detailed historical analysis of various theoretical approaches, van der Linden’s book is a major contribution to the forgotten debate about the Soviet Union.