Svodki and popular opinion in Stalinist Leningrad

Les svodki et l’opinion publique à Leningrad sous Stalin. – À partir des rapports (svodki) du parti communiste sur l’état d’esprit de la population à Leningrad, cet article tente de définir l’opinion publique en URSS dans les années 1930. Par rapport à d’autres types de sources comme les mémoires, les journaux intimes ou les interviews, les svodki ont l’avantage, par la quantité et la variété de leurs sujets, de permettre aux chercheurs de se livrer à certaines généralisations d’ordre démographique. Bien qu’on doive leur faire davantage confiance lorsqu’ils expriment des opinions négatives opposées au régime, on peut également, à condition de les manier avec prudence et dans certaines circonstances, les utiliser comme source des opinions favorables au régime. Ils sont utiles aussi dans la mesure où ils montrent la difficulté de la tâche des propagandistes à cette époque et la mauvaise organisation des campagnes de propagande centrées autour des « ennemis ».This essay examines the use of Communist Party svodki on the popular mood in Leningrad as a means of determining popular opinion in the USSR of the 1930s. The advantage of svodki over other kinds of sources, such as memoirs, diaries, and interviews, is that the quantity and variety of their subjects allow the researcher to make certain demographic generalizations. While svodki tend to be more reliable as sources of “negative,” anti-regime opinion, they can, when used with care and in certain circumstances, be valuable sources of pro-regime opinion as well. They are also useful in showing how difficult was the job of propagandist during this time, and how poorly organized were the propaganda campaigns around “enemies.

Distributed Nested Rollout Policy for Same Game

Nested Rollout Policy Adaptation (NRPA) is a Monte Carlo search heuristic for puzzles and other optimization problems. It achieves state-of-the-art performance on several games including SameGame. In this paper, we design several parallel and distributed NRPA-based search techniques, and we provide a number of experimental insights about their execution. Finally, we use our best implementation to discover 15 better scores for 20 standard SameGame boards

Measuring the Effect of USCG Port Security Advisory Notices On Trade and Port Security Procedures

Overview: The United States Coast Guard’s International Port Security (IPS) Program is the primary port security assessment office and was established in 2003 as part of the U.S. Maritime Transportation Security Act (MTSA) to reduce risks to U.S. ports and ships, and to the entire maritime transport system. Through the assessment of International Ship and Port Facility Security Code implementation and other measures in foreign ports, the International Port Security Program can determine whether or not there is a reasonable and acceptable level of port security at any given foreign port. This report is comprised of qualitative and quantitative research along with two case studies that compare and contrast two countries and/or ports that either succeeded or failed in complying with this program and received a Port Security Advisory (PSA). Hypothesis: Port Security Advisories (PSA) are issued when a port does not meet the International Port Security Program code. They are an instrument to build and sustain port security practices and improvements. PSAs can give standard regulations for those who use ports in compliance with a PSA as well as create maritime security protocols for other countries that do not have strong port standards. As for the economic impacts, there can be both positive and negative factors depending on the country and the situation. However, we hypothesize that overall, PSAs do not significantly influence a country’s volume of trade. Due to non-compliant countries in reporting, there is no discernable method for tracking or ensuring restrictions. Methodology: We will observe quantitative measures of trade to identify negative impacts associated with the issuance of PSAs. We will also look at quantitative data to identify positive impacts associated with PSAs. We will be using USCG’s HOMEPORT website to identify the PSAs and use COMTRADE to examine trade both before and after a PSA was issued. Trade will be compared to similar countries, those which have not received a PSA. Lastly, we will go over local and regional factors and determine what is currently working and what needs to be improved. Conclusions: Our conclusion is that as a system the PSA process is not necessary an influence on trade. There may be correlations between countries with PSAs issued and changes in trade but there are a myriad of other factors that can impact this making the current methodology less than definitive. There also may be certain countries and/or ports where the correlation appears stronger (See Case Study #1); but overall, our conclusion is that PSAs have a negligible impact on a country receiving them in influencing their volume of trade

Preference-Based Monte Carlo Tree Search

Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) is a popular choice for solving sequential anytime problems. However, it depends on a numeric feedback signal, which can be difficult to define. Real-time MCTS is a variant which may only rarely encounter states with an explicit, extrinsic reward. To deal with such cases, the experimenter has to supply an additional numeric feedback signal in the form of a heuristic, which intrinsically guides the agent. Recent work has shown evidence that in different areas the underlying structure is ordinal and not numerical. Hence erroneous and biased heuristics are inevitable, especially in such domains. In this paper, we propose a MCTS variant which only depends on qualitative feedback, and therefore opens up new applications for MCTS. We also find indications that translating absolute into ordinal feedback may be beneficial. Using a puzzle domain, we show that our preference-based MCTS variant, wich only receives qualitative feedback, is able to reach a performance level comparable to a regular MCTS baseline, which obtains quantitative feedback.Comment: To be publishe

Svodki and popular opinion in Stalinist Leningrad*

Lesley A. Rimmel. Svodki and popular opinion in Stalinist Leningrad. This essay examines the use of Communist Party svodki on the popular mood in Leningrad as a means ofdetermining popular opinion in the USSR of the 1930s. The advantage of svodki over other kinds of sources, such as memoirs, diaries, and interviews, is that the quantity and variety of their subjects allow the researcher to make certain demographic generalizations. While svodki tend to be more reliable as sources of "negative," anti-regime opinion, they can, when used with care and in certain circumstances, be valuable sources of pro-regime opinion as well. They are also useful in showing how difficult was the job of propagandist during this time, and how poorly organized were the propaganda campaigns around "enemies."Lesley A. Rimmel. Les svodki et l 'opinion publique à Leningrad sous Stalin. A partir des rapports (svodki) du parti communiste sur l'état d'esprit de la population à Leningrad, cet article tente de définir l'opinion publique en URSS dans les années 1930. Par rapport à d'autres types de sources comme les mémoires, les journaux intimes ou les interviews, les svodki ont l'avantage, par la quantité et la variété de leurs sujets, de permettre aux chercheurs de se livrer à certaines généralisations d'ordre démographique. Bien qu'on doive leur faire davantage confiance lorsqu'ils expri- ment des opinions négatives opposées au régime, on peut également, à condition de les manier avec prudence et dans certaines circonstances, les utiliser comme source des opinions favorables au régime. Ils sont utiles aussi dans la mesure où ils montrent des campagnes de propagande centrées autour des « ennemis ».Rimmel Lesley A. Svodki and popular opinion in Stalinist Leningrad*. In: Cahiers du monde russe : Russie, Empire russe, Union soviétique, États indépendants, vol. 40, n°1-2, Janvier-juin 1999. Archives et nouvelles sources de l'histoire soviétique, une réévaluation Assessing the new Soviet archival sources. pp. 217-234