Cold War Correspondents and the Possibilities of Convergence: American Journalists in the Soviet Union, 1968–1979

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rósa Magnúsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Russian History ◽  
Russian People ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
War Correspondents ◽  
Soviet Ideology ◽  
The Way

This article examines the writings of six American journalists who were stationed in the Soviet Union during the crucial period of détente in 1968–1979. All of them took their role as integrated observers of Soviet society seriously and published book length accounts of their experiences in Russia. They claimed that inside knowledge of Russian history and the Russian people was important for trying to understand the possibilities for change in the Soviet Union. In the process of getting to know the Soviet Union, however, they also revealed the importance of their own cultural background and expectations. They reached the conclusion that while change was possible in the consumer sphere, Russian history and Soviet ideology stood in the way of political convergence.

Neo-Realism and the future of strategy

1993 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Warsaw Pact ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Way

To speak of the ‘future’ of strategy is to reveal a deep tension in the way we commonly think about the subject. On the one hand we are confronted by revolutionary changes in the geo-political landscape. The transformation of Europe, the fragmentation of the Soviet Union, and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, for example, encourage the belief that the Cold War—a term which has been almost synonymous with-strategy for nearly half a century—is now an historical artifact. These events, analyzed so intensively by leaders and commentators, open up significant questions about the future of strategy.

scholarly journals “People of an Uncertain Existence”: The First Soviet Productions of William Saroyan’s Play My Heart’s in the Highlands

2020 ◽  
pp. 208-235
Author(s):  
Maxim M. Gudkov
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Way

Several plays by William Saroyan written in the mid-1930s reached the Soviet stage only during the Khrushchev Thaw, in the early 1960s. The paper focuses on the first Soviet productions of Saroyan’s play My Heart’s in the Highlands, premiered in Armenian (Yerevan) in 1961, and in 1962 staged in Russian by the Mayakovsky Moscow Theatre. The paper analyses the reasons for such a late appearance of Saroyan’s dramas on the Russian stage, traces how Saroyan’s trip to the USSR in 1960 prompted the staging of his work in Armenia’s capital, which thereon paved the way for its Moscow production. The theatrical history of Saroyan’s work in the USSR is viewed in a wide social, political and cultural Soviet-American macro-context during the Cold War. The paper based on the rare materials from the museum of the Mayakovsky Moscow Theatre, focuses on the reception of the play and its production in the Soviet Union. The director Ya.S. Tsitsinovski strove to transmit the elevated, poetic spirit of Saroyan’s work and find a vivid expressive form, which was not typical for the Mayakovsky Theatre of N.P. Okhlopkov’s time. Its appearance on the Moscow stage in 1962 marked the beginning of the scene history of the American author’s drama in our country. The paper is aimed at reconstructing the theatrical history of Saroyan’s plays in the USSR.

scholarly journals The fall of the Albanian - Chinese Relations 1971-1978

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 107
Author(s):  
Dr.Sc. Gjon Boriçi
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Marxist Ideology ◽  
Major Break ◽  
Western Side ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Failure ◽  
The Way

The Albanian - Chinese relations in the years of the Cold War were thrilling as much as dramatic. The age of their flourish in the '60-ies, unfortunately did not last for long. The Albanian sponsorship that China be admitted in the UN with full rights was a test that Enver Hoxha should exploit for the good of the Albanian people. It was a historic and unrepeated opportunity for little Albania to escape the political and economic impasse since the breakup of relations with the Soviet Union in 1961. The incompetence of the Albanian leadership to understand the trends of the age would mark the following political failure of Albania and would influent in the total isolation of the country. It's not difficult to understand that Albania had historic opportunities to join the Western side but chose to align with the Eastern bloc. The beginnings are with sensational approach with Tito's Yugoslavia. After that the Albanian political leadership kept Albania under the umbrella of the Soviet Union and at the end with China. After the end of the relations with China in 1978, Albania paved the way of the total isolation.  The secret visit of the President Nixon's national security adviser Dr. Kissinger to China in July 1971 was interpreted by the Albanian communist leader as a betrayal of the Marxist ideology. Enver Hoxha responded with a harsh and rude letter on August 6th 1971 urging China to not accept the visit of President Nixon the following year. This was the first major break in the relations between the two countries. Since then, the help from China for the weak Albanian economy would decline till the unavoidable break of July 1978. The methodology used in this paper is strictly comparative history analyzing the way diplomacy and politics should work to achieve the set aim.

At Home among Strangers: U.S. Artists, the Soviet Union, and the Myth of Rockwell Kent during the Cold War

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 175-207
Author(s):  
Kirill Chunikhin
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World War ◽  
Soviet Culture ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
American Artist ◽  
Soviet Ideology ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Government Promotion

After World War II, Soviet institutions organized many exhibitions of the American artist Rockwell Kent that bypassed the U.S. government. Promotion of Kent's work in the USSR was an exclusively Soviet enterprise. This article sheds new light on the Soviet approach to the representation of U.S. visual art during the Cold War. Drawing on U.S. and Russian archives, the article provides a comprehensive analysis of the political and aesthetic factors that resulted in Kent's immense popularity in the Soviet Union. Contextualizing the Soviet representation of Kent within relevant Cold War contexts, the article shows that his art occupied a specific symbolic position in Soviet culture. Soviet propaganda reconceptualized his biography and established the “Myth of Rockwell Kent”—a myth that helped to legitimate Soviet ideology and anti-American propaganda.

Women of the Catacombs

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wallace L. Daniel ◽  
Roy R. Robson ◽  
Archpriest Aleksandr Men
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Russian History ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Personal Integrity ◽  
Church Organization ◽  
Russian Orthodoxy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
National Life ◽  
The Church

The memoirs presented in this book offer a rare close-up account of the underground Orthodox community and its priests during some of the most difficult years in Russian history. The catacomb church in the Soviet Union came into existence in the 1920s and played a significant part in Russian national life for nearly fifty years. Adherents to the Orthodox faith often referred to the catacomb church as the “light shining in the dark.” The book provides a first-hand portrait of lived religion in its social, familial, and cultural setting during this tragic period. Until now, scholars have had only brief, scattered fragments of information about Russia's illegal church organization that claimed to protect the purity of the Orthodox tradition. Vera Iakovlevna Vasilevskaia and Elena Semenovna Men, who joined the church as young women, offer evidence on how Russian Orthodoxy remained a viable, alternative presence in Soviet society, when all political, educational, and cultural institutions attempted to indoctrinate Soviet citizens with an atheistic perspective. The book's translation not only sheds light on Russia's religious and political history, but also shows how two educated women maintained their personal integrity in times when prevailing political and social headwinds moved in an opposite direction.

scholarly journals Red Dawn – the final episode of the Cold war

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 901
Author(s):  
Ivan Kovačević ◽  
Vladimir Ribić
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Adequate Response ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Strategic Defense ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Scene

In the period of renewal of the Cold war, after 1980, movies which abandon the idea of the dentate appear, and they represent the response to Soviet expansion taking place under the auspices of diminished military confrontation. Of course, the Hollywood reaction to the real expansion of communism was not at adequate response, but it is a part of the wider restructuring of American politics regarding the Soviet Union, which was evidenced by strengthening defenses through the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), forcible intervention in Grenada, helping anti-communist movements around the world etc. In opposition to part of the US political scene which shut down attempts to stop the spread of communism across the world, action through popular culture, especially film, created a new climate in which multifaceted pressures on the socialist block were prepared. The movie Red Dawn can be considered part of the reaction of US politics on the particularistic view of the dentate as a shield for military and political spread of the USSR in Africa and other parts of the world. This pressure played on the inherent weaknesses of Soviet society in the 1980’s, a society which, after a brief period of failed transformation fell apart at the start of the final decade of the 20th century.

Selling Schnittke

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Schmelz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Alfred Schnittke ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines censorship in the Soviet Union during the Cold War by focusing on the experience of composer Alfred Schnittke (1934–1998). More specifically, it looks at Schnittke’s evolving interactions with Soviet political and aesthetic strictures, as well as the representation and interpretation of those interactions abroad, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. The chapter explores the increasingly complex, globalized musical economy in which late Soviet censorship played a key role. It also discusses the “harsh censorship” that Schnittke had to endure and how it gave him prominence, and ultimately prestige, with the help of various agents such as Gidon Kremer and the Kronos Quartet, the Soviet copyright agency VAAP (All-Union Agency for the Protection of Authors’ Rights), and the BIS record label. Finally, it highlights the actors (performers, producers, impresarios, critics, and listeners) who affect the way music is shaped and received, bought and sold.

US Public Diplomacy: A Cold War Success Story?

2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-79
Author(s):  
John Robert Kelley
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
Radio Free Europe

AbstractThe post-'9/11' revival of interest in US public diplomacy encompasses a wide variety of opinions, all overwhelmingly critical. In view of falling global favourability towards and the foreign policy challenges of the United States during this period, the purveyors of these opinions ultimately agree that US public diplomacy efforts are flawed and ineffective. Of these critical observations, it is interesting to track a thread of logic that yearns for the restoration of public diplomacy's Cold War-era standing, which holds that the spread of liberal democracy behind the Berlin Wall owes a debt to the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, that cultural exchanges with influential members of Soviet society helped to create the groundswell that undermined the communist regime, and that public diplomats made these outcomes possible by being equipped with the necessary tools of statecraft, as well as by wielding an important measure of influence over policy-makers. The fall of the Soviet Union merely underscores their notion that public diplomacy during the Cold War was a success. It would thus seem that the problems of today could be remedied by adopting lessons from the past. This article explores the viability of this claim by reviewing the ongoing debate on how the historical memory and lessons of Cold War-era public diplomacy may be applied to the challenges of the post-'9/11' era. Of particular importance is ascertaining the degree to which the Cold War's campaigns of information, influence and engagement could be viewed as a success. By subdividing public diplomacy's activities in these ways, greater potential exists to attribute these activities to more compelling determinations of success or failure.

Breaking the Ice

2019 ◽  
pp. 59-72
Author(s):  
James Hershberg
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Ice Hockey ◽  
National Hockey League ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Direct Competition ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Way

One of the most iconic intersections of sports and the Cold War came in September 1972, when Canada and the Soviet Union met in the “Summit Series,” pitting the world’s two top ice hockey superpowers. This essay reveals the importance of an October 1971 trip to Canada by Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin. His conversations and experiences during that week—especially a National Hockey League game in Vancouver that almost fell off his schedule—paved the way for a breakthrough to surmount the ingrained dispute over “professional” versus “amateur” players that had long blocked direct competition.

"Soviet Atlantis". Mythology of the revolution

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Михаил Колесов ◽  
Mihail Kolesov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Philosophical Methodology ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Socialist Revolution ◽  
Main Task ◽  
Russian History ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
The Soviet Union

The monograph is a thematic continuation of the author's publication "Philosophy of Russian history" (Moscow: University textbook: INFRA-M, 2015), which identified the basic principles of philosophical methodology in relation to Russian history. The main task of the book is to formulate a systematic concept of the Soviet period of Russia from the idea of The world socialist revolution to the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a result of the analysis and comprehension of the well-known historiographical material, the author comes to the conclusion that the historical consciousness of the Soviet society was formed in a certain mythologized paradigm. It is intended for a wide modern readership, especially youth.

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