Download or read book The Soviet Ambassador written by Christopher Shulgan and published by Emblem Editions. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few realize that behind Mikhail Gorbachev’s Cold War-ending perestroika reforms stood an owlish figure who was just as important as the Soviet leader himself. Fewer still know the role Canada played in transforming Gorbachev’s advisor from a devout Stalinist to the most potent force for democracy and justice ever to walk the halls of the Kremlin. His name was Aleksandr Yakovlev. Today in an increasingly autocratic Russia he’s reviled as the man who brought down the Soviet empire–the "architect" of perestroika and the "godfather" of glasnost, who, some say, was the puppetmaster manipulating Gorbachev’s strings. Yakovlev is acknowledged to have devised the strategy that won Gorbachev the job of Soviet leader. After the Soviet collapse, Yakovlev was the only other man present as Gorbachev negotiated his transfer of power to Russian president Boris Yeltsin. In between, Yakovlev was behind every democratic measure Gorbachev instituted, leading the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer David Remnick to dub him "Gorbachev’s good angel." His origins were anything but democratic. As a youth, Yakovlev was a faithful Communist who idolized Stalin. By 1970 he had ascended to a position that controlled every media outlet in the Soviet Union, requiring him to plot repressive strategies against such dissidents as Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov But then a mis-step caused the Party to banish him from Moscow. A disgraced Yakovlev landed in the Cold War backwater of Ottawa working as the Soviet ambassador to Canada. His career should have been over. But Yakovlev’s diplomatic posting functioned as an education in Western democracy. He grew fascinated with elections, attended trials and became an expert in the machinations of a market economy. He also developed a close friendship with Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who helped arrange to bring Mikhail Gorbachev on his first visit to North America. It was in Canada that Gorbachev and Yakovlev struck up their friendship as they strategized for the first time the radical changes known as perestroika. Drawing on interviews with Yakovlev’s family and dozens of his friends, as well as never-before-disclosed archival research material, The Soviet Ambassador recounts Yakovlev’s tortuous evolution from Stalin’s acolyte to Stalinism’s nemesis, from faithful member of the Communist Party to liberal democrat engineering the same Party’s collapse. With profound implications for diplomacy in a conflict-driven age, Yakovlev’s story is also a remarkable testament to the power of conviction, and an inspiring account of an underdog overcoming injustice to improve the lives of his fellow citizens.
Download or read book The Fundamental Things Apply written by Roy MacLaren and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2011-04-06 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the parliamentary years, from his first election in 1979 to his appointment to London in 1996, MacLaren draws on his diary to offer impressions - at times devastating, at others sympathetic - of those he encountered in his several ministerial capacities and global travels. Earlier, life in Saigon and Hanoi following the French Indo-China war, the oppressions of the Stalinist regime in Czechoslovakia, the erection of the Berlin Wall, multilateral diplomacy at the United Nations in Geneva and New York during the Cold War are recounted with both insight and humility. Of his business career, MacLaren offers, for example, an insider's perspective on the collapse of Massey-Ferguson and the successes of his business magazine company. A political memoir set in an autobiography, The Fundamental Things Apply ranges widely over Canadian economic and international affairs, including NAFTA and deficit elimination, during the latter decades of the twentieth century, offering a timely and personal account of how the public policies - both domestic and international - pursued then were formative in creating the country we live in today.
Download or read book The Canadian Who s who written by and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 1292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Constant Diplomat written by Charles A. Ruud and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2009 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert A.D. Ford had a distinguished diplomatic career that included an unprecedented sixteen years as Canadian ambassador to the Soviet Union during some of the most turbulent and important years of the Cold War (1964-80). Relying heavily on first-person testimony, including several interviews with Ford himself, Charles Ruud takes the reader behind the official announcements, revealing Ford's thoughts and actions as he dealt with what was then seen as the great arch-enemy of Western democratic nations. During his tenure as ambassador Ford was in frequent contact with Moscow's rulers and aware of their struggles, hopes, plans, and fears. Although they appeared powerful, Ford insisted that they sat uneasily on their Kremlin thrones. He showed their shortcomings and the flaws of their system at moments of apparent triumph and warned against miscalculating their strength. Shaped by centuries of Russian tsarism and by Communist ideology, Soviet leaders distrusted the world outside their borders and often failed to understand it, making mistakes and then compounding them, always without acknowledgment. The Constant Diplomat uncovers the experiences that informed Ford's capacity to understand the Russians and provides a clear picture of the evolving Soviet domestic, political, social, and cultural scene from the late Stalin era through to the end of the Brezhnev regime.
Download or read book Dictionary of Canadian Biography written by and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 812 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book On Six Continents written by James K. Bartleman and published by Douglas Gibson Books. This book was released on 2011-03-04 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Muskoka, the University of Western Ontario, Ottawa, New York, Colombia, Bangladesh, Nicaragua, Peru, Cuba, Israel, Belgium, South Africa, Australia –the place-names tell the story of an amazing career. Then there are the people involved –Trudeau, Clark, and Chrétien, Kissinger, Castro, Rabin, Walesa, Havel, Mandela and dozens of others. Not to mention the moments of high drama: when young Jim Bartleman becomes Ottawa’s security expert on terrorism during the FLQ crisis in 1970; or when he leads the movement to bring countries like Poland and Ukraine into NATO and the West. But this is also a light-hearted look at what our diplomats actually do and is full of funny stories: so watch young Jim attend a drunken party with Trudeau; compete with Mother Teresa for Bangladesh babies; or sweep his Belgian bride off her feet to the altar. Bartleman also writes candidly about falling prey to depression, and about his concern, as a native Canadian, to see aboriginal peoples well treated. In summary, a richly varied career, as the only Canadian diplomat to serve on all six continents, well told by a remarkable character. *** On Six Continents is a Douglas Gibson Book.
Download or read book Our Man in Tehran written by Robert Wright and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2011-01-11 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the true story behind Argo, read Our Man in Tehran The world watched with fear in November 1979, when Iranian students infiltrated and occupied the American embassy in Tehran. The Americans were caught entirely by surprise, and what began as a swift and seemingly short-lived takeover evolved into a crisis that would see fifty four embassy personnel held hostage, most for 444 days. As Tehran exploded in a fury of revolution, six American diplomats secretly escaped. For three months, Ken Taylor, the Canadian ambassador to Iran—along with his wife and embassy staffers—concealed the Americans in their homes, always with the prospect that the revolutionary government of Ayatollah Khomeini would exact deadly consequences. The United States found itself handcuffed by a fractured, fundamentalist government it could not understand and had completely underestimated. With limited intelligence resources available on the ground and anti-American sentiment growing, President Carter turned to Taylor to work with the CIA in developing their exfiltration plans. Until now, the true story behind Taylor’s involvement in the escape of the six diplomats and the Eagle Claw commando raid has remained classified. In Our Man in Tehran, Robert Wright takes us back to a major historical flashpoint and unfolds a story of cloak-and-dagger intrigue that brings a new understanding of the strained relationship between the Unites States and Iran. With the world once again focused on these two countries, this book is the stuff of John le Carré and Daniel Silva made real.
Download or read book Getting it Done written by Derek Burney and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2005-04-25 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a candid memoir, Burney paints a vivid picture of leading politicians, including Pierre Trudeau using an off-colour joke to break the ice with Ronald Reagan, Colin Powell becoming upset over Canadian concerns about collateral damage in the first Gulf War, and George Bush Sr chafing at the excessive European flavour of G-7 summits.
Download or read book Rollercoaster written by James K. Bartleman and published by Douglas Gibson Books. This book was released on 2011-06-22 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For four years, James Bartleman mixed with all the biggest names – Clinton, Blair, Yeltsin, Mitterrand, Castro, Kohl, Chirac, and on and on, as Chrétien’s Henry Kissinger figure. He was involved in deadly serious crisis management, accompanying Chrétien to all the world’s hot spots – dodging bullets in Sarajevo, and trying to avoid war in the Spanish trawler incident. Not to mention dealing with Premier Li of China on an official visit encountering protestors in Montreal and shouting, “I am departing immediately. Never have I and my country been so humiliated.” Which leader at the G7 Summit in Halifax passed out drunk in the hotel elevator? What did Jean Chrétien do to set White House aides threatening, “the next time there’s a referendum, we will support the separatists”? And why did Fidel Castro grab our author, shaking him and snarling, “I hope you are satisfied, Bartleman”? It’s all in this lively book. Every major world crisis of these years is represented here, and every region of the world. You’ll be amazed at how widely Chrétien and Bartleman travelled and how much top-level action they experienced. Canadian foreign policy has never seemed so exciting. Or so funny (as when the angry Japanese prime minister’s Ottawa visit was marred by a health problem officially described as “soft poo”). A candid, witty, eye-opening book about foreign affairs at the top.
Download or read book Cooper s Snoopers and Other Follies written by Peter Johnston and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Johnston, retired ambassador, tells a story of five years in the Canadian Army in the Second World War, much of them spent as a sergeant in counter-intelligence, including close to two years rounding up amateur spies and other nasties in Italy. He writes of later years in the Canadian foreign service, some of them working with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Service and many of them engaged in examining assessments of intelligence during the Cold War, entailing close contacts with the British and American intelligence authorities. He also writes of his life as an ambassador in Indonesia and of his subsequent adventures as an elections monitor in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Angola. Reviewing Johnston's book in the November issue of the Rockcliff News, Charles King, one-time Chief of the Ottawa Bureau of Southam News Services and former Associate Editor of the Ottawa Citizen, spoke of the author as "a snoop with a difference", as "an unconventional outsider looking in on the refinements of a diplomatic life", as "an intelligence officer in the dim, secret world of counter-espionage" who, "in all his adventures was sustained by an impish sense of the ridiculous nature of his role". Similar reactions were expressed in Bout de Papier, the quarterly journal of the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers. David Peel, retired ambassador and Inspector General of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service 1994-98, began his review by expressing his "big disappointment, for which you should prepare yourself, when you get to page 164 of this little book: it ends. Far too soon." Among Peel's comments on Johnston's experiences in the Second World War, he noted that, "he makes his adventures in the long advance of the Canadians up the boot of Italy sound funny, ridiculous and touching but they give a vivid picture of war and the men who fought in it". On his life as a diplomat and civil servant, Peel suggested that "His age and experience gave him a perspective that other newcomers lacked and his stories and comments on the situations and people he encountered are, while generally kind, great fun and sometimes scathing-the sort of thing we all wish we'd had the courage to say at the time". Peel concluded his summary of the book's contents by referring back to his opening remark, that "at page 164, that's just how I felt about his book-reluctant to let go".
Download or read book Subject Catalog written by Library of Congress and published by . This book was released on with total page 1018 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Canada First Not Canada Alone written by Adam Chapnick and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive history of Canadian foreign policy since the 1930s, Canada First, Not Canada Alone examines how successive prime ministers have promoted Canada's national interests in a world that has grown increasingly complex and interconnected. Case studies focused on environmental reform, Indigenous peoples, trade, hostage diplomacy, and wartime strategy illustrate the breadth of issues that shape Canada's global realm. Drawing from extensive primary and secondary research, Adam Chapnick and Asa McKercher offer a fresh take on how Canada positions itself in the world.
Download or read book The Good Fight written by Brendan Kelly and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2019-11-01 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before official bilingualism was established in 1969, francophones were scarce in the Canadian public service. Marcel Cadieux was one of the few, becoming arguably the most important francophone diplomat and civil servant in Canadian history. Brendan Kelly’s insightful, entertaining biography draws on extensive archival research and interviews to reveal a complex figure. Cadieux held the nationalist views of many young French Canadians in the 1930s, yet he made the distinctly unconventional decision to join the Department of External Affairs in 1941. Public service became the vocation of this blunt, funny, strong-minded, and sometimes undiplomatic diplomat. Against the backdrop of rising Quebec separatism and the Cold War, he headed the department from 1964 to 1970 and served as Canada’s first francophone ambassador to the United States from 1970 to 1975. Cadieux’s profound belief in the dignity of service speaks eloquently to readers today, when professionalism and expertise are often undervalued.
Download or read book Yearbook International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea Annuaire Tribunal international du droit de la mer Volume 22 2018 written by ITLOS and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-12-16 with total page 551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ITLOS Yearbook 2018 provides information on the composition, jurisdiction, procedure and organization of the Tribunal and reports on its judicial activities in 2018, in particular concerning Case No. 25. The Yearbook is prepared by the Registry of the Tribunal. Le TIDM Annuaire 2018 fournit des informations essentielles concernant la composition, la compétence, la procédure et l’organisation du Tribunal. Il donne également un aperçu des activités judiciaires du Tribunal au cours de l’année 2018, en particulier en ce qui concerne l’affaire no. 25. L’Annuaire est rédigé par le Greffe du Tribunal.
Download or read book Yearbook International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea Annuaire Tribunal international du droit de la mer Volume 21 2017 written by ITLOS and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 595 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Yearbook provides information on the composition, jurisdiction, procedure and organization of the Tribunal and about its judicial activities in 2017. L'Annuaire fournit au public des informations sur la composition, la compétence, la procédure et l’organisation du Tribunal ainsi que sur les activités judiciaires menées par celui-ci en 2017.
Download or read book Yearbook International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea Annuaire Tribunal international du droit de la mer Volume 20 2016 written by ITLOS and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-08-15 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Yearbook provides information on the composition, jurisdiction, procedure and organization of the Tribunal and about its activities in 2016. L'Annuaire fournit au public des informations sur la composition, la compétence, la procédure et l’organisation du Tribunal ainsi que sur les activités menées par le Tribunal en 2016.
