Propaganda in the World and Local Conflicts

4-16

Authors: Maria V. Bratolyubova, Vladimir P. Trut

The article deals with the problem of political caricature as a visual-content component of the mass propaganda during the international military-political crisis of World War I, based on the analysis of the satirical drawings presented on the pages of the Don periodical press during the war. We analyze the positive visualization of the “friends” and the negative visualization of the “foes” in the satirical cartoons in the Don periodical press during World War I. We considered the most typical examples of a political caricature, as well as their content and the connection between their visual image and the content. In conclusion, the authors note that the visual sources analysis suggests the artistic primitiveness of the "image of the enemy". The cartoonists intentionally made the "image of the enemy" artistically unattractive. The worse it was, the greater effect it achieved and the more revealing was the absurdity and vulgarity of the enemy. Thus, it weakened the physical and moral strength of the enemy.

24-51

Authors: Michal Smigel

The Ukrainian insurgent army, which operated in western Ukraine and south-eastern Poland during the World War II – from 1942 onwards, continued in its actions during the post-war years but it slightly altered its mission. The leaders of the Ukrainian underground movement expected that a political conflict would start between the actors of the anti-Hitler coalition and that a new armed conflict would start between the West and the Soviet Union. This, they thought, would mark the end of the Soviet regime in Eastern Europe. In this situation the Ukrainian underground encouraged the Soviet Union republics and countries of middle and south-eastern Europe, to a united armed conflict against bolshevism. This was to be done in the so called: Front of Enslaved and Endangered Nations of Middle and Eastern Europe. To practically realize these aims the Ukrainian insurgent units undertook several propaganda raids during 1945–1950 into Belarus, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania and into the Baltic states (Lithuania). These raids were a new form of anti-Soviet activities and struggle of the Ukrainian insurgent army during the post-war years. Czechoslovakia was one of the main targets for these raids, which took place in three phases: August – September 1945, April 1946 (both in eastern Slovakia) and the so called: Great raid through the republic into the American zone in Germany during June – October/November 1947, which also had a profound international response. This paper focuses on first two raids of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Slovakia in 1945 – 1946, analyzes them from the viewpoint of forms and methods of the struggle and analyzes the structure and forms of the elimination by the Czechoslovak security forces.

62-80

Authors: Matthew D. Johnson

This article examines the emergence and impact of the threat image of U.S.-led globalization on national strategic paradigms in the People’s Republic of China. It finds that, beginning in the mid-1990s, internal discussions focusing on national cultural security (NCS) became increasingly influential within elite policymaking circles and directly impacted assessments of comprehensive national security and sovereignty—specifically, how these concepts were to be defined. Other results demonstrate the importance of NCS to institutions and policy frameworks emblematic of the “cultural turn” in politics under Xi Jinping. Finally, the article draws parallels between NCS and, within the People’s Liberation Army, the evolving doctrine of psychological warfare, hypothesizing that these developments are connected by a shared paradigm uniting strategists within the party-state-army. It concludes that strong consensus concerning cultural security exists at the national level and that, viewed from a historical perspective, “Xiism” as an approach to politics and information flow management is grounded in an intellectual and institutional transformation—cultural securitization—which first emerged during the mid-1990s.