Joseph Grigulevich: A Tale of Identity, Soviet Espionage, and Storytelling

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 314-341
Author(s):  
Andrei Znamenski
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Military History ◽  
Costa Rican ◽  
Second Career ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Leon Trotsky

This paper explores the life of Joseph Grigulevich (1913–1988), a famous early Soviet illegal intelligence operative, who conducted various “special tasks” on behalf of Stalin’s foreign espionage network. These included the murder of dissident Spanish communist Andreas Nin (1938), a participation in the assassination of Leon Trotsky (1940), posing as a Costa Rican ambassador (1949–1952), and an abortive project to assassinate Joseph Bros Tito (1952). In contrast to conventional espionage studies that are usually informed by diplomatic, political, and military history approaches, I employ a cultural history angle. First, the paper examines the formation of Grigulevich’s communist and espionage identity against his background as a cosmopolitan Jewish “other” from the interwar Polish-Lithuanian realm. Second, it explores his role in the production and invention of intelligence knowledge, which he later used to jump start his second career as a prominent Soviet humanities scholar and a bestselling writer of revolutionary non-fiction.

scholarly journals Book Review: 9/11 and the War on Terror: A Documentary and Reference Guide

2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 300
Author(s):  
Carla Wilson Buss
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
Military History ◽  
September 11 ◽  
First Person ◽  
Reference Guide ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Research Institute

In the nearly sixteen years since the terrible events of September 11, 2001, nearly 13,000 non-fiction books have been written about that day. Topics range from first-person accounts to memorials to collections of documents. A new addition to the crowded field is 9/11 and the War on Terror: A Documentary and Reference Guide. The author, Paul J. Springer, is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and Professor of Comparative Military History at the Air Command and Staff College in Alabama. His work presents excerpts of declassified documents, chosen to illustrate the effects on and between terrorism and counterterrorism. The selected material is freely available elsewhere, but in this collection the author provides a useful chronology and a short analysis of both the impetus to create the document and its effects.

scholarly journals Sikring af forsvarshistorisk kulturarv i Danmark

1970 ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Jens Ole Chistensen
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Military History ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Relevant Research ◽  
Process Of Change ◽  
Constructivist Perspective ◽  
Active Research ◽  
Work Done

Securing the cultural heritage is one of the primary tasks of a museum of cultural history. However, this aspect of these museums’ work rarely attracts attention nor is it subject to any substantial professional debate, despite it being of critical importance for a museum’s future opportunities for development. Since the 1990s, the cultural heritage work done at the National Museum of Military History in Denmark has moved from an object-oriented positivistic perspec- tive to a research-based, problem-oriented and constructivist perspective, as well as moving to conducting active, research-based collecting. This article surveys this process of change and argues for the necessity of departing from ideas that are cha- racteristic of 19th-century museum ideals. The overall conclusion is that collecting should always be conducted as a response to a carefully considered problem that is based on a relevant research issue. This article accounts for the model chosen by the National Museum of Military History.

Nationalism, Peace Education, and History Textbook Revision in Scandinavia, 1886-1940

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrik Åström Elmersjö ◽  
Daniel Lindmark
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Peace Education ◽  
History Education ◽  
Military History ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
School Subject ◽  
History Textbook ◽  
History Teaching ◽  
International Understanding ◽  
International Orientation

History as a school subject has been a thorny issue for advocates of peace education at least since the 1880s. Efforts, including the substitution of cultural history for military history, have been made to ensure that history teaching promotes international understanding, not propagates chauvinism. The Norden Associations of Scandinavia, which were involved in textbook revision since 1919, achieved some success by altering contents, but national myths remained central to each country's historical narrative, making it difficult to give history education its desired international orientation.

Cold War History between Revision and New Insights, and their Consequences for Military History

2014 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-26
Author(s):  
Georges-Henri Soutou
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Military History ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Science Methodology ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Cold War History

This overview of the academic literature on the Cold War argues that current historiography is characterised by a combination of classical historical approaches and political science methodology. Military history alone cannot explain the phenomenon; it has to reach out into political, economic, and ideological fields. Towards the end of the Cold War, revisionist approaches blaming the West to a large extent for the international tension after 1945, seemed to gain ground, but after the opening of the former Eastern Bloc archives, they lost credibility. Recently, based on cultural history approaches, they appear to be gaining ground again. Recent historiography also looks at the rifts within the Communist world, both the tensions between states in the Soviet orbit, and at the role of Western Communist parties. In many ways, the crisis years of 1958–1962 emerge as the pivotal period of the Cold War (Berlin, Cuba, etc.). Finally, the way the origins of the Cold War are interpreted has a direct impact on how its eventual termination is explained. Was it due to cultural factors, to nato cohesion, or to German Ostpolitik?

British Women's Writing, 1930 to 1960

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Women's Magazines ◽  
Doris Lessing ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Female Subjectivity ◽  
Original Essays ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Kamala Markandaya ◽  
Stevie Smith ◽  
Daphne Du Maurier

British Women Writers 1930 – 1960: Between the Waves contributes to the vital recuperative work on mid-twentieth century writing by and for women. Fourteen original essays from leading academics and emerging critical voices shed new light on writers commonly dismissed as middlebrow in their concerns and conservative in their styles and politics. The essays showcase the stylistic, cultural and political vitality of the fiction, non-fiction, drama, poetry and journalism of a selection authors including Vera Brittain, Storm Jameson, Nancy Mitford, Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Rumer Godden, Attia Hosain, Doris Lessing, Kamala Markandaya, Susan Ertz, Marghanita Laski, Elizabeth Bowen, Edith Pargeter, Eileen Bigland, Nancy Spain, Vera Laughton Matthews, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Dorothy Whipple, Elizabeth Taylor, Daphne du Maurier, Barbara Comyns, Shelagh Delaney, Stevie Smith and Penelope Mortimer. The neologism ‘interfeminism’, coined to partner Kristin Bluemel’s ‘intermodernism’, locates this group chronologically and ideologically between two ‘waves’ of feminism, whilst forging connections between the political and cultural monoliths which have traditionally overshadowed its members. Drawing attention to the strengths of this ‘out-of-category’ writing, the volume also highlights how intersecting discourses of gender, class and society in the inter- and post- bellum anticipate the bold reassessments of female subjectivity that characterize second and third wave feminism. Exploration of popular women’s magazines of the period, and new archival material, add an innovative dimension to this study of the literature of a volatile and transformative period of British social and cultural history.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document