State Violence, Justice, And The Suffering Of Others

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Sandrine Sanos
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
French Writer ◽  
Painful Experience ◽  
Tzvetan Todorov ◽  
Nazi Camps ◽  
Do So

In 1955, Alain Resnais's now canonical documentary, Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog) ended with an ominous question, asking “who, among us, is keeping watch from this strange watchtower [of the ruins of Auschwitz] to warn of the arrival of our new executioners” who might bring about the return of the “concentrationary plague?” One man had already made it his mission to do so: the French writer and former political deportee David Rousset. Rousset had shaken the French world of letters and politics with the 1946 publication of L'univers concentrationnaire (The Concentrationary Universe), which warned of the civilizational and moral cesura that the Nazi camps had been. The term quickly became a widely used conceptual framework. Former deportee and Catholic writer Jean Cayrol borrowed from it to write his voice-over to Night and Fog. In 1949, Rousset published another text that created a scandal in Cold War France: an Appeal to “fellow deportees” calling upon them to “investigate the USSR's concentrationary universe” (Kuby, 46). This indictment fiercely divided the French left. In 1950, he brought a libel suit against another former deportee, communist writer Pierre Daix, who had accused him of amnesiac “apoliticism” (Kuby, 65–6; Dean, 61). Just before, in the wake of his Appeal, Rousset had founded an organization against concentrationary regimes with those, like him, who had been political deportees. In 1951, it put the Soviet Union on trial for crimes against humanity. Rousset and his organization were involved in many trials, eager to denounce the “new executioners” who had revived the “scourge of the camps” in the postwar world. For many today, he is an “exceptional” man because, as philosopher and critic Tzvetan Todorov argues, he was not paralyzed by the memory of “this painful experience”; instead, he harnessed it into action against dehumanizing state violence. For Todorov, Rousset had allowed morality to prevail over base political considerations.

Capitalism's Fellow Traveler: The Soviet Union, Bretton Woods, and the Cold War, 1944–1958

2014 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 290-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oscar Sanchez-Sibony
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World Order ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Foreign Economic Policy ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Economic Engagement ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Do So

AbstractThis paper is a reinterpretation of the origins of the Cold War from a novel point of view: Soviet foreign economic policy. It questions two fundamental concepts that have formed the basis for our understanding of that conflict: Soviet autarky, and bipolarity. Soviet autarky has been the basis for an understanding of a “war” that, although never fought on military terms, needed two sides to be so conceptualized. Just as enemies in war can have no areas of meaningful cooperation, so did academics require of these Cold War rivals an all-encompassing enmity. To do so they came to consider the Soviet Union a camp apart, unconnected and hostile to the capitalist order. Scholars required a Soviet Union politically committed to autarky. Using archives from Moscow, however, the article argues that the Soviet Union was not autarkic by political choice and, at length, not autarkic at all. It followed a similar trajectory in international economic engagement as that of the countries in the so-called free world, and what's more, sought to do so. In other words, when one looks at the political economy of Soviet economic relations, the conceptual framework of bipolarity that sustains much of the work on the Cold War becomes difficult to maintain. Instead, I argue, an immensely powerful liberal world order acted on the Soviet Union in ways that should be familiar to scholars of global capitalism.

Nuclear Deterrence, Counterforce Strategies, and the Incentive to Strike First

1991 ◽  
Vol 85 (3) ◽  
pp. 727-749 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Harrison Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rational Behavior ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Extended Deterrence ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Do So

I use the theory of games to investigate issues about how to understand the use of nuclear counterforce strategies by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The function of the counterforce strategies I model is not to enable a state confidently to launch a nuclear attack but to convince its adversary that the probability that it might do so as a last resort is greater than zero. The models allow one to investigate rational behavior when information is incomplete and there is an incentive to strike first, and therefore provide a way to explore controversies about the effect of counterforce strategies on both the credibility of extended deterrence and the possibility of inadvertent nuclear war. The models suggest, contrary to the claims of a number of writers, that the use of nuclear counterforce strategies is not necessarily inconsistent with rational behavior and provide some insight into the relation between counterforce strategies and brinkmanship models of deterrence.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE CONCENTRATION CAMP: DAVID ROUSSET AND THE LIMITS OF APOLITICISM IN POSTWAR FRENCH THOUGHT

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-173
Author(s):  
EMMA KUBY
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Forced Labor ◽  
Governmental Agencies ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Nazi Camps ◽  
Bear Witness

In 1949, French intellectual David Rousset publicly called on Nazi camp survivors to bear witness to the existence of a “concentration camp universe” in the Soviet Union. Rousset, a former Buchenwald internee and an influential author, demanded that his fellow survivors identify in unqualified terms with the suffering of Soviet prisoners. Even as he colluded with Cold War governmental agencies, Rousset claimed that the imperative to oppose concentration camps existed “beyond” political or ideological commitments. This essay analyzes the arguments about suffering, politics, and memory made by Rousset and his contemporary critics, notably Jean-Paul Sartre. It responds to Rousset's admirers who have overlooked distinctive aspects of his project: his rhetoric of apoliticism, his demand for complete identification with victims, his exclusive interest in limit-case abjection as opposed to injustice in general, his interpretation of the Nazi camps that centered on forced labor rather than on genocide, and his avoidance of the language of human rights.

Trust, but Verify

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

This book uses trust—with its emotional and predictive aspects—to explore international relations in the second half of the Cold War, beginning with the late 1960s. The détente of the 1970s led to the development of some limited trust between the United States and the Soviet Union, which lessened international tensions and enabled advances in areas such as arms control. However, it also created uncertainty in other areas, especially on the part of smaller states that depended on their alliance leaders for protection. The chapters in this volume look at how the “emotional” side of the conflict affected the dynamics of various Cold War relations: between the superpowers, within the two ideological blocs, and inside individual countries on the margins of the East–West confrontation.

Enemy Number One

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rósa Magnúsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Exchanges ◽  
Inferiority Complex ◽  
Available Information

Enemy Number One tells the story of Soviet propaganda and ideology toward the United States during the early Cold War. From Stalin’s anti-American campaign to Khrushchev’s peaceful coexistence, this book covers Soviet efforts to control available information about the United States and to influence the development of Soviet-American cultural relations until official cultural exchanges were realized between the two countries. The Soviet and American veterans of the legendary 1945 meeting on the Elbe and their subsequent reunions represent the changes in the superpower relationship: during the late Stalin era, the memory of the wartime alliance was fully silenced, but under Khrushchev it was purposefully revived and celebrated as a part of the propaganda about peaceful coexistence. The author brings to life the propaganda warriors and ideological chiefs of the early Cold War period in the Soviet Union, revealing their confusion and insecurities as they tried to navigate the uncertain world of the late Stalin and early Khrushchev cultural bureaucracy. She also shows how concerned Soviet authorities were with their people’s presumed interest in the United States of America, resorting to monitoring and even repression, thereby exposing the inferiority complex of the Soviet project as it related to the outside world.

The Cold War in the Schools

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria M. Grieve
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
School Experiences ◽  
Civil Defense ◽  
Voluntary Programs ◽  
Exchange Programs ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
War Experiences ◽  
The Cold War

The Cold War experiences of America’s schoolchildren are often summed up by quick references to “duck and cover,” a problematic simplification that reduces children to victims in need of government protection. By looking at a variety of school experiences—classroom instruction, federal and voluntary programs, civil defense and opposition to it, as well as world friendship outreach—it is clear that children experienced the Cold War in their schools in many ways. Although civil defense was ingrained in the daily school experiences of Cold War kids, so, too, were fitness tests, atomic science, and art exchange programs. Global competition with the Soviet Union changed the way children learned, from science and math classes to history and citizenship training. Understanding the complexity of American students’ experiences strengthens our ability to decipher the meaning of the Cold War for American youth and its impact on the politics of the 1960s.

Ballet in the Cold War

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Searcy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
The United States ◽  
Performing Artists ◽  
Exchange Programs ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

During the Cold War, the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union developed cultural exchange programs, in which they sent performing artists abroad in order to generate goodwill for their countries. Ballet companies were frequently called on to serve in these programs, particularly in the direct Soviet-American exchange. This book analyzes four of the early ballet exchange tours, demonstrating how this series of encounters changed both geopolitical relations and the history of dance. The ballet tours were enormously popular. Performances functioned as an important symbolic meeting point for Soviet and American officials, creating goodwill and normalizing relations between the two countries in an era when nuclear conflict was a real threat. At the same time, Soviet and American audiences did not understand ballet in the same way. As American companies toured in the Soviet Union and vice versa, audiences saw the performances through the lens of their own local aesthetics. Ballet in the Cold War introduces the concept of transliteration to understand this process, showing how much power viewers wielded in the exchange and explaining how the dynamics of the Cold War continue to shape ballet today.

Trygve Lie, 1946–1953

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Jenny Ravndal
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Security Council ◽  
The United States ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
International Peace ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
Political Negotiation

This chapter explores all aspects of Trygve Lie’s interaction with the Security Council, beginning with his appointment process and the negotiation of the relative domains of the Council and the Secretary-General. This was a time when the working methods of the UN system were rapidly evolving through political negotiation and responses to external crises. It examines Lie’s personality and character, how he viewed his own responsibilities in the maintenance of international peace and security as crises arose, the legal and political tools he developed and exercised, and his changing relationship with individual permanent members and the six elected members. In the emerging Cold War, Lie’s position in the Security Council would be determined in particular by his relationships with the United States and the Soviet Union. Taking initiative in response to external crises in Iran, Palestine, Berlin, and Korea, Lie succeeded in laying foundations for an expanded political role for the Secretary-General.

The Handbook of European Defence Policies and Armed Forces

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Security Challenges ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
National Defence

The armed forces of Europe have undergone a dramatic transformation since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Handbook of European Defence Policies and Armed Forces provides the first comprehensive analysis of national security and defence policies, strategies, doctrines, capabilities, and military operations, as well as the alliances and partnerships of European armed forces in response to the security challenges Europe has faced since the end of the cold war. A truly cross-European comparison of the evolution of national defence policies and armed forces remains a notable blind spot in the existing literature. This Handbook aims to fill this gap with fifty-one contributions on European defence and international security from around the world. The six parts focus on: country-based assessments of the evolution of the national defence policies of Europe’s major, medium, and lesser powers since the end of the cold war; the alliances and security partnerships developed by European states to cooperate in the provision of national security; the security challenges faced by European states and their armed forces, ranging from interstate through intra-state and transnational; the national security strategies and doctrines developed in response to these challenges; the military capabilities, and the underlying defence and technological industrial base, brought to bear to support national strategies and doctrines; and, finally, the national or multilateral military operations by European armed forces. The contributions to The Handbook collectively demonstrate the fruitfulness of giving analytical precedence back to the comparative study of national defence policies and armed forces across Europe.

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