Suchergebnisse

When the Geneva agreements of July 1954 at Jast brought a measure of peace back to Indo-China, the Viet-Minh régime found itself in legal and recognised possession of that section of the country which lay north of the seventeenth parallel and which is officially known today as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. By then, part of this area, comprising the Viet-Minh's war-zones I, II, III and most of IV, thirty-three provinces in all, had already long been held by Ho Chi Minh's troops and in much of it a semblance of the new order's system of local government had been in regular operation for some years back. In a good deal of the rest, clandestine and fragmented centres of rebel control had perilously co-existed throughout the war with the old administration maintained at great cost by the French authorities. Finally, in many places, particularly the urban concentrations, no appreciable degree of Viet-Minh influence had managed to last out the conflict.

Option of nationality in its various forms
played an important rôle in the international law
and diplomacy of the second half of the nineteenth
century and the first quarter of the twentieth.
The concept undoubtedly reached a peak in
popularity and demand in connection with the
territorial settlements arising from the first
World War, only to fall into disuse in subsequent
years. The heyday of the idea of option in general
international law and relations in the years
following 1918 also coincided with the high point
of the usage of the principle in Soviet diplomatic
practice. Indeed, perhaps in the diplomatic
repertoire of no other nation was option of
nationality as frequently resorted to in this or
any other comparable period as in the Soviet
treaty arrangements of 1917–1924. Option in all
its various juridical expressions occupied from
the very first an extremely important place in the
legal and political acts of the Soviet regime in
its search for a modus
vivendi with Russia's neighbors.
What is more, the experience of these first years
firmly established option as an active and
operative principle of Soviet foreign policy, in
which capacity it has remained until the very
present, whereas in the rest of the international
community option has but rarely been revived since
World War I.

The first indications of Moscow's willingness to share its technological know how in nuclear science with other countries appeared on January 18, 1955. On that date, the Council of Ministers of the USSR published a declaration to the effect that, "attributing great importance to the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes, the Soviet government has decided to render scientific, technical and production aid to other states in setting up experimental bases for developing research in nuclear physics and in utilizing atomic energy for peaceful purposes."