Italy: A Clean‐up after the Cold War

1993 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franceso Sidoti
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
The World ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Conflictual Relationship

In These Pages We Will Discuss The Thesis That in order to understand the present problems of Italy, one must look back on an era of international politics dominated by the bipolar and conflictual relationship between East and West. This came to an end finally after the failed Moscow coup in mid-1991.From 1946, without interruption, in a Europe divided by the iron curtain, Italy was the frontier country where the cold war was most bitterly fought, because the Italian Communist Party (PCI) was the strongest communist party in the world outside the Soviet empire. From many viewpoints, the Italian Communists were ordinary politicians peacefully involved in cooperatives and in the trade unions. Their management of some important regions and municipalities was judged very favourably by many scholars. In public declarations they stated their preference for a peaceful way to socialism, conversion to liberty, independence from Soviet influence, and acceptance of a democratic system. In fact they shared Moscow's orientations in every international problem where East and West were opposed. Now we understand why: they were heavily financed, directly and indirectly, by the Soviets. But after Yeltsin had thrown out many skeletons from the Kremlin closets, we had the proof that the staunch anti-communists were right. The big lie about Bolshevism concerned Italy also, where the PCI had been helped from Stalin to Gorbachev. This is why still in 1985 the Italian Communists declared the USA to be the only imperialist state in the world.

Hegemonic Disarray—American Internationalisms and World Disorder

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Deudney
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
International Order ◽  
The World ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
At Home

The end of the Cold War left the USA as uncontested hegemon and shaper of the globalization and international order. Yet the international order has been unintentionally but repeatedly shaken by American interventionism and affronts to both allies and rivals. This is particularly the case in the Middle East as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the nuclear negotiations with Iran show. Therefore, the once unquestioned authority and power of the USA have been challenged at home as well as abroad. By bringing disorder rather than order to the world, US behavior in these conflicts has also caused domestic exhaustion and division. This, in turn, has led to a more restrained and as of late isolationist foreign policy from the USA, leaving the role as shaper of the international order increasingly to others.

Lukewarm Neutrality in a Cold War? The Case of Austria

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 36-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erwin A. Schmidl
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Military Occupation ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Other Orientation ◽  
Over Time

Geographically, Austria's position during the Cold War differed significantly from that of Switzerland or Sweden, let alone Ireland. Austria, like Finland, was situated along the Iron Curtain. In 1945, Austria was divided between East and West, and the Soviet Union hoped that the Austrian Communists could quickly gain power by largely democratic means. This effort failed, however, when the Communists lost decisively in the November 1945 elections. Over the next decade, Austria remained under Soviet and Western military occupation. The formal adoption of a neutral status for Austria in May 1955, when the Austrian State Treaty was signed, was a compromise needed to ensure the departure of Soviet forces from Austria. Although some other orientation might have been preferred, neutrality over time became firmly engrained in Austria's collective identity.

The Doppelgänger and his Master

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kuba Mikurda
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
Late Modernity ◽  
Repressed Memory ◽  
Current State ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Two Sides

A performative introduction, by Kuba Mikurda, to Johan Grimonprez’s Double Take (2009). Based on the themes of duality, playing for both sides, and doppelgänger fantasy, the tells not only the tale of Alfred Hitchcock’ lifelong fascination with such motifs, but also of the Cold War (and its influence on our contemporaneity) as a Hitchcock-esque reality. Using archive footage of Alfred Hichcock Presents, where the author of Psycho impersonates various alternative versions of himself, Grimonprez shows that the two sides of the Iron Curtain are actually two sides of the same coin – perfect mirror images of its double. The same is true for Cold War paranoia, the returning phantom of a global conflict, or atom war – it is ultimately difficult to say whether the films of the master of suspense, such as Birds and North by Northwest are its manifestation or is it maybe that in the current state of late modernity, our experience of the world took on the features of a Hitchcock film. Grimonprez – an artist known for gallery projects and theoretical interests, offers a story of the duplexity of a divided world – a slightly histo/erical one and full of distance and games. All the same, as Karen Beckmann reminds us, “the sameness of a twin is based on the repressed memory of division, breakage, and a sudden partition”.

scholarly journals From Iron Curtain to Velvet Curtain? Peter Brook's Hamlet and the Origins of British–Soviet Cultural Relations during the Cold War

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 601-626 ◽  
Author(s):  
SARAH DAVIES
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Divide

The article assesses the significance of the Moscow tour of Peter Brook's Hamlet. It considers how far the tour succeeded in overcoming the symbolic iron curtain by examining what Hamlet meant for contemporaries on both sides of the political divide. It argues that the Hamlet tour served at once to perpetuate and undermine the divisions between East and West, confirming Iriye's observation that on one level the Cold War intensified antagonism between states, while on another it helped to foster the growth of internationalist sentiment.

The Cold War, the Unity of the Church and Eastern Orthodoxy, 1948-1966

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jurjen A. Zeilstra
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Eastern Orthodoxy ◽  
Third Way ◽  
The World ◽  
World Council ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Church ◽  
East West

Chapter 7 traces Visser ’t Hooft’s activity as a (controversial) bridge builder during the period of the Cold War, on the unity of the church, and Eastern Orthodoxy. Despite the Cold War, which prevented Eastern Orthodox churches from joining the World Council, Visser ’t Hooft held firmly to the direction set by the World Council as a third way between East and West, utilising insights he laid out in earlier publications. At the same time the World Council had to deal with the question of churches recognising other churches as true. In this chapter we see how Visser ’t Hooft inspired people to apply ecumenicity across the East-West divide. The chapter also looks at criticism of Visser ’t Hooft’s approach.

2. Two Worlds East and West, 1945–8

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Young ◽  
John Kent
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
Berlin Crisis ◽  
The World ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
War Consequences

This chapter examines how the world was divided into two opposing blocs, East and West, during the period 1945–1948. It begins with a discussion of the Marshall Plan, focusing on its implementation and its Cold War consequences, and the Western economic system. It then considers the Soviet Union’s takeover of Eastern and Central Europe, with emphasis on the split between Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia. It also looks at the struggle for influence in East Asia and concludes with an assessment of the division of Germany. The chapter suggests that the Berlin crisis was in many ways a symbolic crisis in a city which came to epitomize Cold War tensions until 1989; the crisis has also been regarded as an important cause of the militarization of the Cold War and the formation of NATO.

Tony goes out into the world: The official travels abroad of the President of Czechoslovakia, Antonín Novotný (1953–68)

2021 ◽  
pp. 002252662110314
Author(s):  
Pavel Mücke
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
Soviet Leader ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
The World ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Cold War

The long-term First Secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and later also President of the Republic, Antonín Novotný (1904–75), was popularly known as “Nice Tony”. As a communist politician and statesman, Novotný was well known as a great disciple and follower of Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev, famous for his personal and very contact-oriented diplomacy. The main contours of several of Novotný's official visits have already been analysed from political and diplomatic history perspectives. Based on archival research and available memoirs, this article tries to reconstruct the still non-visible and unknown view of transport history and, consequently, traveling and tourism history. It outlines the general contours and several aspects of V.I.P. communists’ international travels on the cases of several trips abroad which took place during the 1950s and 1960s of the Cold War era.

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