Search results for "World War II"
showing 10 items of 108 documents
Changing definitions of Asia
2012
The meaning of Asia has changed drastically during the millennia the concept has been in use. Its usage was established in Greek literature 2,500 years ago as a geographic reference to lands inhabited by the Greeks at the Eastern side of the Aegean Sea. Over the ensuing centuries, Asia’s Western boundary was extended to the rivers Don in the North and Nile in the South. At that time, it hardly contained any definite political or civilisational meanings. These were added to the concept in 1730 in a kind of Swedish–Russian cooperation when the Urals were redefined to form the boundary between Europe and Asia, the former starting to represent progress, and the latter its opposite. This situati…
Historia y memoria de la educación : HMe
2019
Finalizada la Segunda Guerra Mundial en 1945, fueron muchos los que creyeron que el fin del conflicto supondría la caída del franquismo, el regreso del gobierno republicano y la vuelta de la democracia a España. Desde el exilio, el retorno estuvo muy presente en publicaciones, reuniones, manifiestos y acciones políticas, especialmente en México y en Francia. Entre los temas tratados en los círculos de los desterrados con mayor implicación política e intelectual sobresalió la educación, dada la importancia que se le daba a la formación de las nuevas generaciones de españoles que deberían de retomar los principios y valores republicanos. El artículo examina tres documentos con propuestas de l…
The Holocaust and the birth of Israel in British, Swedish and Finnish press discourse, 1947–1948
2009
This article examines the way in which the Holocaust was linked to the process of the birth of Israel between 1947 and 1948 in the mainstream British, Swedish and Finnish press. By utilising a framework of comparative cultural history, this essay seeks to understand why different countries responded to the suffering of the Jews during the Second World War in such diverse ways. This essay also seeks to question the popular belief that the two events were intimately linked, and that the link was recognised in a straightforward manner. Hence, the study argues that although the press coverage sometimes managed to establish the connection between the two events, more typically the news was domes…
Exploiting the Exiles: Soviet Émigrés in U.S. Cold War Strategy
2012
This article discusses the abortive U.S. government effort to organize Soviet émigrés after World War II. After years of a lack of interest on the part of both the United States and the Soviet Union, Soviet émigrés and émigré politics came to the fore with the onset of the Cold War. The U.S. government sought to use émigrés in political and psychological warfare against the Soviet bloc. The many studies that have looked at Cold War-era psychological warfare have largely ignored U.S. plans to enlist Soviet émigrés on the West's behalf. Attempts to create a political forum for anti-Bolshevik Soviet émigrés were broader than have been understood thus far, revealing important information about…
Return Visits: The European Background of Transcultural Life Writing
2013
In this article I read autobiographies by East Europeans who immigrated to Canada in connection with the Second World War as examples of transcultural life writing. My focus on the representation of return visits of these loyal Canadian citizens to their country of origin after 1989 reveals the underlying intention of relating the experience of life in a multicultural democratic society to the emergence of a new political consciousness in Eastern Europe. In my analysis I distinguish four types of concerns which try to bridge the past of their childhood experiences with the formation of a transcultural life in the 21st century: 1. Anna Porter’s return visit to Hungary for family reunion and …
Archive Photography That Forms a Personal and Collective Memory
2021
Personal and family albums created by Latvians in the period from 1939 until the 1950s are placed in a wider social and historical perspective by analyzing its content, as well as the individual intent to create it. This work explores photography album as a tool to organize memories and how historical, personal photography albums serve and interact as evidence of private as well as a public past. The research tries to prove the historical authenticity in two personal albums created by Latvians during the Second World War and the following years – a visual diary illustrating the imprisonment in the Soviet working camp in Siberia and a family album memorializing the way and life of the Latvia…
Forbidden and sublime forest landscapes: narrated experiences of Latvian national partisan women after World War II
2015
At the beginning of the Cold War, tens of thousands of Baltic people headed for the forests. It was the largest and longest such experience of human and forest interaction in the history of the three Baltic countries. The forest was turned into a political concept and had abruptly become a doubly sensitive zone: to the authorities it was a space of revolt subject to their control; to the locals, the forests were transformed into sites of both resistance and shelter when life was endangered. Based on recorded life story interviews, this article examines how women experienced the changes in their native landscapes after World War II in the occupied Baltic states, and what it meant for them to…
The Adaptation of an Ethnic Minority in Finland in the 1940s and 1950s: Orthodox displaced persons and the Lutheran indigenous population
2013
This article examines the imposed adaptation of Orthodox Finns, who were evacuated from territories ceded to the Soviet Union during the Second World War in the areas where they were settled. It elucidates both the settlement measures taken by the Finnish authorities and the unofficial forms of control, such as labelling and other discriminatory practices, exercised by the local populations. By controlling the behaviour of the displaced persons, the original inhabitants were able to make the newcomers conform to the values, norms and habits of the Lutheran community at both local and national levels.
Mortal threat: Latvian Jews at the dawn of Nazi occupation
2018
In late June 1941, Nazi Germany stormed the borders of the Soviet Union, occupying the three Baltic republics within weeks. By the end of 1941, a significant proportion of the Jewish population had been murdered by German forces and local collaborators. In the days before full Nazi occupation of the territory, Latvia's Jews confronted the question of whether to flee into the Russian interior or stay in their communities. History shows that this would be a critical choice. Testimonies and memoirs of Jewish survivors illuminate the competing motivations to leave or to remain. This article highlights the key factors that figured into these calculations and the interaction between individual ag…
Marriage Guidance, Women and the Problem(s) of Returning Soldiers in Finland, 1944-1946
2017
When former military chaplains began to give marital guidance to troubled couples after the end of hostilities with the Soviet Union (1941–1944) in Finland, new information about the causes and experiences of marital problems and divorces emerged during guidance sessions. Even lengthy marriages were seen to be burdened due to the stress of reunion and men’s wartime infidelity, increased inclination to drinking and aggressive behaviour. The article discusses the meaning and construction of marital expectations with respect to the development of post-war marital dissolution, and argues that wives in particular tried to adjust their marital expectations in accordance with the general developme…