In the former Soviet Union during the Khrushchev-Brezhnev era, the KGB used its forensic psychiatric institutions to brand, arbitrarily and for political reasons, large numbers of political dissidents as suffering from “schizophrenia” and “paranoid psychosis,” and then incarcerated them for long periods in “special psychiatric hospitals.” In 1976, the Soviet Union was severely censured on this ...

The first in this series Of three articles, published in the September-October 1997 issue of ARMOR. addressed American lank developmenJ during the HbrJd \\brs. This article focuses upon lhe Cold "'b, era prior to the development of the M I Abrams, illustrating the injlutnu oj the Soviet military threat. The desire to field a technologically superior lank that would more than offset Soviet numer...

Although the anti-plague system of the former Soviet Union developed fully during the Soviet era, its foundations were laid long before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. This article traces the evolution of the anti-plague measures from imposition of temporary quarantine in affected areas to the creation of the standard response system and the establishment of permanent anti-plague organization...

The paper considers some of the views of the Stalin–era relationship between Soviet industry and the Red Army that are current in the literature, and disentangles some confusions of translation. The economic weight of the defence sector in the economic system is summarised in various aspects. The lessons of recent archival research are used as a basis for analysing the army–industry relationshi...

The fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union marked the end of an era in which official ideology and state policy often masked the reality of citizens' lives. This contradiction was particularly acute for women, a group that the Soviet model of communism was intended to emancipate (Basu, 1995; Bystydzienski, 1992; Corrin, 1992; Einhorn, 1993; Millarand and Wolchik, 1994; ...

This paper discusses the shifting relationships between civic organizations and the state in contemporary Russia. Drawing on a case study of the provincial city of Tver, the paper explores how local activists and authorities interpret citizenship and draw the state-society boundaries at the juncture between the Socialist past and the capitalism of today. The paper argues that the authorities ad...

the caucasus has seen numerous crises since the region gained independence following the collapse of the soviet :union:. some of these crises have not been resolved yet as evidenced by recent russia-georgia conflict. this paper seeks to analyze such crises within the framework of significant geopolitical changes unfolded by the collapse of the soviet :union:. the author argues that in the post-...