The Truth About Friendship Treaties: Behind The Iron Curtain

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Selvage
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Sphere Of Influence ◽  
The Cold War

The basic, legal building blocks for the Soviet sphere of influence during the Cold War were the bilateral ‘Treaties of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance’ between the states of East Central Europe and the Soviet Union. Germany was the main potential enemy, but the treaties also applied to any state allied with it or any third state in general – most importantly, the United States. This article traces the evolution of the East Central European states' limited sovereignty from the origins of the friendship-treaty system during World War II through to its final reformulation in the mid-1970s. In terms of the Soviet bloc friendship treaties, one can speak of three periodsm the first of which began with the establishment of the system of friendship treaties under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, 1943–1948, and ended with his death in 1953. A second period began after Stalin's death in 1953 and the eventual assumption of power by Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev, whose removal ushered in a third and final period for the friendship-treaty system under his successor, Leonid Brezhnev.

Exploiting the Exiles: Soviet Émigrés in U.S. Cold War Strategy

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simo Mikkonen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Psychological Warfare ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Cold War

This article discusses the abortive U.S. government effort to organize Soviet émigrés after World War II. After years of a lack of interest on the part of both the United States and the Soviet Union, Soviet émigrés and émigré politics came to the fore with the onset of the Cold War. The U.S. government sought to use émigrés in political and psychological warfare against the Soviet bloc. The many studies that have looked at Cold War-era psychological warfare have largely ignored U.S. plans to enlist Soviet émigrés on the West's behalf. Attempts to create a political forum for anti-Bolshevik Soviet émigrés were broader than have been understood thus far, revealing important information about the postwar emigration from the Soviet Union, the émigrés' role in the Cold War in general, and the development of U.S. Cold War strategies in relation to the émigrés.

Cold War Exiles and the CIA

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Tromly
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
West Germany ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Home Base ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Secret War

During the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, the United States government unleashed covert operations intended to weaken the Soviet Union. As part of these efforts, the CIA undertook support of Russian exiles, populations uprooted either during World War II or by the Russian Revolution decades before. No one seemed better prepared to fight in the American secret war against communism than the uprooted Russians, whom the CIA directed to carry out propaganda, espionage, and subversion operations from their home base in West Germany. Yet the American engagement of Russian exiles had unpredictable outcomes. Drawing on recently declassified and previously untapped sources, Cold War Exiles and the CIA examines how the CIA’s Russian operations became entangled with the internal struggles of Russia abroad and also the espionage wars of the superpowers in divided Germany. What resulted was a transnational political sphere involving different groups of Russian exiles, American and German anti-communists, and spies operating on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Inadvertently, CIA’s patronage of Russian exiles forged a complex sub-front in the wider Cold War, demonstrating the ways in which the hostilities of the Cold War played out in ancillary conflicts involving proxies and non-state actors.

Revisiting the 1954 Coup in Guatemala: The Soviet Union, the United Nations, and “Hemispheric Solidarity”

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Denise Getchell
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Good Neighbor ◽  
The Cold War

This article reevaluates the U.S.-backed coup in 1954 that overthrew Guatemala's democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán. The coup is generally portrayed as the opening shot of the Cold War in the Western Hemisphere and a watershed moment for U.S.–Latin American relations, when the United States supplanted its Good Neighbor Policy with a hardline anti-Communist approach. Despite the extensive literature on the coup, the Soviet Union's perspectives on the matter have received scant discussion. Using Soviet-bloc and United Nations (UN) archival sources, this article shows that Latin American Communists and Soviet sympathizers were hugely influential in shaping Moscow's perceptions of hemispheric relations. Although regional Communists petitioned the Soviet Union to provide support to Árbenz, officials in Moscow were unwilling to prop up what they considered a “bourgeois-democratic” revolution tottering under the weight of U.S. military pressure. Soviet leaders were, however, keen to use their position on the UN Security Council to challenge the authority of the Organization of American States and undermine U.S. conceptions of “hemispheric solidarity.” The coup, moreover, revealed the force of anti-U.S. nationalism in Latin America during a period in which Soviet foreign policy was in flux and the Cold War was becoming globalized.

The Anti-Aryan Moment: Decolonization, Diplomacy, and Race in Late Pahlavi Iran

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 691-702
Author(s):  
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Cold War

In 1946, the entertainer and activist Paul Robeson pondered America's intentions in Iran. In what was to become one of the first major crises of the Cold War, Iran was fighting a Soviet aggressor that did not want to leave. Robeson posed the question, “Is our State Department concerned with protecting the rights of Iran and the welfare of the Iranian people, or is it concerned with protecting Anglo-American oil in that country and the Middle East in general?” This was a loaded question. The US was pressuring the Soviet Union to withdraw its troops after its occupation of the country during World War II. Robeson wondered why America cared so much about Soviet forces in Iranian territory, when it made no mention of Anglo-American troops “in countries far removed from the United States or Great Britain.” An editorial writer for a Black journal in St. Louis posed a different variant of the question: Why did the American secretary of state, James F. Byrnes, concern himself with elections in Iran, Arabia or Azerbaijan and yet not “interfere in his home state, South Carolina, which has not had a free election since Reconstruction?”

scholarly journals UNITED STATES DURING THE COLD WAR 1945-1990

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 39
Author(s):  
Novita Mujiyati ◽  
Kuswono Kuswono ◽  
Sunarjo Sunarjo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
The Cold War

United States and the Soviet Union is a country on the part of allies who emerged as the winner during World War II. However, after reaching the Allied victory in the situation soon changed, man has become an opponent. United States and the Soviet Union are competing to expand the influence and power. To compete the United States strive continuously strengthen itself both in the economic and military by establishing a defense pact and aid agencies in the field of economy. During the Cold War the two are not fighting directly in one of the countries of the former Soviet Union and the United States. However, if understood, teradinya the Korean War and the Vietnam War is a result of tensions between the two countries and is a direct warfare conducted by the United States and the Soviet Union. Cold War ended in conflict with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as the winner of the country.

Screening Migrants in the Early Cold War: The Geopolitics of U.S. Immigration Policy

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 154-179
Author(s):  
Peter J. Verovšek
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Immigration Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Screening Process ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Argument Proceeds

The main elements of U.S. immigration policy date back to the early Cold War. One such element is a screening process initially designed to prevent infiltration by Communist agents posing as migrants from East-Central Europe. The development of these measures was driven by geopolitical concerns, resulting in vetting criteria that favored the admission of hardline nationalists and anti-Communists. The argument proceeds in two steps. First, the article demonstrates that geopolitics influenced immigration policy, resulting in the admission of extremist individuals. Second, it documents how geopolitical concerns and the openness of U.S. institutions provided exiles with the opportunity to mobilize politically. Although there is little evidence that the vetting system succeeded in preventing the entry of Communist subversives into the United States, it did help to create a highly mobilized anti-Communist ethnic lobby that supported extremist policies vis-à-vis the Soviet Union during the early Cold War.

The Origins of the Cold War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Edelstein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Common Cause ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter traces the deterioration of Soviet-American relations at the end of World War II and into the beginning of the cold war. While the United States and the Soviet Union found common cause during World War II in defeating Hitler’s Germany, their relationship began to deteriorate as the eventual defeat of Germany became more certain. The chapter emphasizes that it was growing beliefs about malign Soviet intentions, rather than changes in Soviet capabilities, that fuelled the origins of the cold war. In particular, the chapter details crises in Iran, Turkey, and Germany that contributed to U.S. beliefs about long-term Soviet intentions. As uncertainty evaporated, the enmity of the cold war took hold.

“If You Want Peace, Prepare for War”

2019 ◽  
pp. 12-38
Author(s):  
Petra Goedde
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Peace Activism ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Military Preparedness ◽  
Diplomatic Relationship

The first chapter of The Politics of Peace provides an analysis of peace within the context of the diplomatic relationship between East and West. Between the late 1940s and early 1960s, both sides in the Cold War battle used the rhetoric of peace to advance their own domestic and international political agendas. By repeating the narrative of their failure to prevent World War II, US and Western European governments promoted a strategy of peace through strength and military preparedness. The United States in particular regarded peace advocates as a threat to national security and often accused them of being either communist agents or naïve idealists who had been duped into becoming puppets of international communism. While the Soviet Union and its allies followed a similar strategy of military preparedness, they linked the rhetoric of peace to internationalism, often institutionalizing peace activism within the bureaucratic machinery of the Communist Party.

Neutrality or Involvement? World War II and Evolution of Foreign Policy Concepts of the Nordic Countries

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 222-256
Author(s):  
E. V. Korunova
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Fundamental Reason ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Cold War

In the middle of the 20th century a unique subsystem of international relations emerged in the Northern Europe, which has turned it into one of the stablest and most peaceful regions during the Cold War period. Nowadays, rising international tensions bring new relevance to the history lessons of World War II, its origins and aftermaths. The paper examines the evolution of the Nordic countries’ views on the issue of neutrality from mid-1930s to the end of 1940s. The first section considers the approaches of the Scandinavian countries to the establishment of a collective security system in the region in the interwar period. In that regard, the paper focuses on the Swedish project of the Northern defense alliance, which was aimed at deepening military cooperation between the states of the region and strengthening their ability to jointly deter any aggression as the best way to guarantee their neutrality. However, this project had not been implemented, because it faced both cool reactions from the leaders of Norway and Denmark and suspicion from the leading powers. According to the author, the fundamental reason for the failure of that project was that Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland sought support and protection from different, opposing great powers. The latter circumstance had also to a large extent predetermined the fate of the Scandinavian countries during the war years, when almost all of them were in one form or another involved in the conflict. The victory of the anti-Hitler coalition both opened new opportunities and posed new challenges for the states of the region: in the emerging bipolar world they rapidly turned into the subject matter of dispute of the superpowers. In these conditions, Sweden once again put forward the idea that in order to preserve peace in the region, the Nordic countries should be able to defend their neutrality and proposed the establishment of a Scandinavian Defense Union. In the final section, the paper examines the reaction to this project of the Scandinavian countries, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Great Britain. The author shows that although this reaction was more than restrained, and the project was not implemented, Sweden’s initiatives contributed to the creation of a unique security architecture in Northern Europe, where each state of the region had its own role with the neutral Sweden serving as a balancing force.

scholarly journals Friends – of a Kind: America and its Allies in the Second World War Mary E. Glantz, FDR and the Soviet Union: The President's Battles Over Foreign Policy (Lawrence: Kansas University Press, 2005, $34.95). Pp. 253. ISBN 0 7006 1365 X. Steven Merritt Miner, Stalin's Holy War: Religion, Nationalism and Alliance Politics, 1941–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003, $55.00). Pp. 407. ISBN 0 8078 2736 3. Mark A. Stoler, Allies in War: Britain and American Against the Axis Powers 1940–1945 (London and New York: Hodder Arnold, 2005, £25.00). Pp. 291. ISBN 0 340 72026 3. David Stone, War Summits: The Meetings that Shaped World War II and the Postwar World (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005, $29.95). Pp. 304. ISBN 1 57488 901 X.

2006 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 635-644
Author(s):  
MARTIN H. FOLLY
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Second World

The Second World War continues to be an attractive subject for scholars and even more so for those writing for a general readership. One of the more traditional areas of focus has been the ‘Big Three’ – the alliance of the United States with Britain and the Soviet Union. Public interest in the three leaders – Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin – remains high, and their decisions continue to resonate in the post-Cold War era, as demonstrated by continued (and often ahistorical) references to the decisions made at the Yalta Conference. Consequently, while other aspects of Second World War historiography have pushed into new avenues of exploration, that which has looked at the Grand Alliance has followed fairly conventional lines – the new Soviet bloc materials have been trawled to answer old questions and using the frames of reference that developed during the Cold War. This has left much to be said about the nature of the relationship of the United States with its great allies and the dynamics and processes of that alliance, and overlooked full and rounded analysis of the role of that alliance as the instrument of Axis defeat.

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