This article introduces Scandinavia (or the Norden, as the region is sometimes called) and describes the position of the five Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, during the Cold War. The Cold War created a new political situation in the Nordic region, and to some degree divided the Nordic countries between East and West and also on the German question. The introduction analyses how the Nordic countries dealt with Germany – that is with the two German states, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, and also describes the role of the Soviet Union and how it tried to influence the Nordic stance on the German question.

This article examines Weimar Germany's public controversy about the Republic's place in German history. In a period that was seen by many contemporaries as a time deprived of historical context, all political parties tried to legitimise their actions and aims through the construction of very different historical traditions. Based on a wide range of primary sources, the article seeks to analyse this ‘battle over the past’ within the broader context of Weimar's political culture and the Republic's struggle for survival.

This article covers the relationship between the National Labour Confederation of Spain and the Comintern and its union adjunct the Profintern, from the Confederation's initial support for the October Revolution to its subsequent outright rejection of communist politics, with reference to the positions adopted by revolutionary syndicalist movements in other countries. During this period a small number of individuals attempted to tie the Confederation to the Communist International, but failed. The article covers an important period in Spanish labour history, and helps to explain the mistrust that would bedevil the Spanish revolutionary working-class movement until the Civil War. Previous research has presented the battle for control of the CNT as a straightforward battle between anarchists and communists. This was not the case. The pro-communists were a miniscule faction, led by men recently affiliated to the CNT and who had no understanding of the depth of rejection of politics by Confederal militants. They only managed to take control of the national committee by chance. Aware of their weakness they were forced to act in a secretive and often underhand manner. Using material not consulted in previous studies this article shows the extent of their subterfuge and of the opposition this created in the Confederation, as well as demonstrating that the CNT was not the only revolutionary organisation to reject the Bolshevik International.

This article examines the international history of the early Brezhnev era, 1964–72, when the Soviet Union simultaneously became more politically stable and socially stagnant. Evidence from a variety of sources indicates that, contrary to the presumptions of many observers, Brezhnev had a serious programme (‘developed socialism’) for revitalising the Soviet system. This programme included a number of international and domestic measures to improve Soviet technology and consumer economy within a strictly managed political framework of authority. Improved relations with the United States and Western Europe (‘détente’) were crucial to this programme. Continued Cold War competition gave ‘developed socialism’ a necessary source of legitimacy. Brezhnev succeeded in selling this programme to other Cold War leaders, but he confronted debilitating resistance at home. Rising domestic expectations within the Soviet empire, the maturation of the post-Stalin generation of citizens, and pervasive social unrest exposed the hypocrisy and shallowness of ‘developed socialism’. Although Brezhnev's programme sought to give the Soviet system a new start, by the late 1960s it contributed to a deepening rot.

This article explores the complex dynamics that informed Soviet policies on the western frontier – the territories stretching between the Baltic and Black Seas annexed by the Soviets in 1939–40 – and involves several interlocking aspects: the permeability of borders prone to irredentist pressures by socialist satellites, mass tourism from the West and the Soviet bloc, and the increasing flow of information from foreign media sources; the conflicting sentiments that led locals to embrace or reject reforms based on different pre-Soviet memories, the experiences of the Second World War, postwar sovietisation policies and the suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956; the impact of Romanian and Czechoslovak policies on the authorities and populations of the western republics and the Kremlin's concerns over the region as key factors in the decision to invade Czechoslovakia; and, finally, the domestic and international consequences for an aging, self-styled revolutionary regime choosing between youthful reform and stagnant stability.

Letters have always been an important medium between rulers and subjects in the Soviet Union and Russia. This article looks at letters from young people to Soviet party officials, newspapers and youth organizations, using them as texts in their own right rather than as sources for the events they describe. A close and detailed analysis of the letters' language, structure and style reveals the subjective universe of their authors and the function of letters both in the personal life of their writers and in the Soviet system overall. Particular attention is paid to letters that employ confessionary narratives. The eschatological trajectory of other Soviet autobiographical texts, which chart the inevitable progress from an unenlightened state to ideological conviction, is reversed in these letters, leading the reader from a happy Soviet life to a point of confusion and ideological doubt. While the crises, which are at the heart of these letters, reveal the difficulties of young people in making sense of the Soviet world around them, they also demonstrate the extent to which young people's norms, values and language were infused by Bolshevik thought. The process of letter writing was thus both an affirmation of the system and a testimony to its failings.

This article analyses Danish relations with the two German states. After 1949 Denmark found itself in a special position as the only West European country that was neighbour to both Germanys, having a land border with the Federal Republic and a sea border and important communications links with the German Democratic Republic. But Denmark recognised only the Federal Republic as the legitimate representative of Germany. Germany had historically constituted a serious problem for Denmark, and even in the after-war period Danish relations with its big neighbour were beset with problems. After 1955, when the minority question was settled and Denmark and the FRG were both members of NATO, relations with West Germany improved. Relations with the GDR were much more troubled because Denmark was to an extent forced to bow to West German interests, but could not ignore the existence of the East German neighbour state.

Laura Marani Argnani was one of the most politically fanatical and dedicated of the leaders of the Fasci Femminili (the women's section of the Italian Fascist Party). She was FF provincial fiduciary in the northern province of Reggio Emilia from 1929 to 1940 and a PNF national inspectress from 1937. Marani Argnani is a particularly interesting figure, since the provincial federation she led was one of the most successful in Italy in terms of levels of membership and activities. This article focuses on her ideology, the reasons for her success and the motivation for her political activism.

The study of the ‘Chechen problem’ from the civil war period to the aftermath of the 20th Congress of the CPSU highlights a major topic in recent historiography of the Soviet period: the resistance to the regime. The various ways in which the Chechens resisted sovietisation over several decades provide a fine illustration of the highly complex notion of ‘social resistance’ in the Soviet Union. In the Chechen case, the manifestation and expression of resistance were rooted either in deeply ingrained social identities, community and tradition or in national and universal strategies of popular collective action. But the ‘Chechen problem’ also provides a good example of the different reactions and policies of the Soviet state when faced with this kind of ‘multi-dimensional’ resistance. These policies changed and evolved over the years: armed operations aimed at the ‘eradication of Chechen banditry’ in the 1920s and 1930s, total deportation in 1944 and, after 1956, the removal of most of the limitations imposed on the ‘punished’ national group.

After the end of the Second World War, when Finland sought to redefine its position vis-à-vis Germany, negotiations were dogged by the fact that Finland had been a close ally of Hitler's Germany in 1941–4 in the war against the USSR. In April 1948 Finland signed a Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance (FCMA) with the USSR, in which the military articles were based on the need to counter a potential German attack on the Soviets via Finland's territory. Finland's international position was so difficult that it became the only country in the world that did not establish full diplomatic relations with either of the German states. It was also the only country in the world to pursue a policy of absolute neutrality vis-à-vis both Germanys. When the Finnish government offered to host the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) in May 1969, its main preoccupation was the German question, and it succeeded in fending off Soviet pressure to recognise the GDR. In 1973, with West German Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt's Neue Ostpolitik easing tensions with regard to the German question, Finland was able to establish full diplomatic relations with both German states simultaneously.

This article conceptualises the dissemination by Nazi party and state institutions of racial categories of Germanness and Jewishness and the imposition of these categories on segments of the population as a form of linguistic violence. Centring on the Reich Kinship Office during the Second World War, the article argues that racial discourses were not static, but were constantly remade in the practices of the office's employees and their interaction with petitioners desperately seeking to escape persecution. The office's practices exemplify the competing discourses of Nazism, as employees saw the Kinship Office's discourses increasingly undermined by SS and police agencies and their growing power and more radical languages.

From the first Italian Fascism proclaimed its aim of nationalising, centralising and moralising Italian politics. During the regime the cult of the ethical state was the most obvious and continuing expression of this ambition. This article argues that the decline of Fascism, already very evident by the end of the 1930s, was closely linked to the regime's failure to realise these objectives and that this failure was in large part a consequence of the difficulties experienced by Fascism in changing the relationship between the provinces and the centre in terms of the way in which power was perceived and employed in the provinces. It is argued that these difficulties were implicit in the way in which Fascism had been understood by its provincial supporters from the very beginnings of the movement.

Danish nuclear policy was decided in the years 1949–60. The policies adopted by the Danish government in this period did not differ essentially from those of the other Western allies. For example, the government did not want the crucial decision of whether and when to use nuclear weapons to be made by the military. It should remain a political decision, in practice to be made by the US president. One distinctive Danish policy, however, was the decision not to allow storage of nuclear warheads on Danish soil ‘under the present circumstances’. The motives for this seemingly irresolute policy are discussed in this article.

This article highlights the extent to which Norway's policies towards the two Germanys and ‘the German question’ were anchored in its perception of ‘the German problem’. While the Cold War overshadowed Norway's relations with the GDR, ‘the German problem’ prevailed in its relations with the FRG well into the 1960s. Norwegian dependence nevertheless forced it to support West German reconstruction, rearmament and sovereignty. Relations with Bonn were a perennial political minefield. While Norway loyally followed NATO's restrictive policy towards the GDR, from the early 1960s politicians saw that this stood in the way of détente. Bonn's new Ostpolitik in the late 1960s allowed for political rapprochement between Oslo and Bonn and held out the hope of achieving the long-awaited rapprochement with East Berlin.

From the 1950s to 1970s the West German public sphere underwent a rapid politicisation which was part of the ongoing socio-cultural democratisation of the Federal Republic. This article examines the role of the mass media and journalistic elites in bringing about this change. It analyses how and when political coverage in the media evolved from an instrument of consensus to a forum of conflict. Arguing that generational shifts in journalism were crucial to this process, two generations, termed the ‘45ers’ and the ‘68ers’, are described in regard to their professional ethos and their attitudes toward democracy, mass culture, German traditions and Western models.

This article engages with the innovatory methodological approaches within political economics that no longer seek to establish a set of universal laws applicable to a variety of cases, but to provide a convincing explanation of certain individual, exemplary cases. Recent research into public administration in twentieth-century Italy is one case that supports the theories because it postulates that what Italy is today can in part be explained by the exceptional continuity of the enti pubblici (public or government agencies) whose fortunes have been largely determined by Italy's peculiar institutional and cultural milieux. The article examines (i) the proliferation of the enti pubblici as an administrative formula in response to the economic crisis after the First World War; (ii) the periods of growth and decline in the use of this formula and its connection with politics; and (iii) the ways in which the existence of a solid and widespread corporatist culture enabled the enti to survive the fall of Fascism. It concludes that the persistence of the ente pubblico is attributable to a specific culture which is an integral part of Italy's historical identity.