The Thinking Singer

Max Eastman ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Irmscher
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Untimely Death ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
Word Game ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Dialectic Materialism

After his return to the United States in 1927, Max Eastman finds himself isolated from his former radical friends. A controversy with Sidney Hook over his interpretation of Marxism increases his depression, as does the lackluster response to his novel, Venture. Crystal Eastman’s untimely death in 1928 nearly ends Max’s career as a professional lecturer, but Eliena’s devotion to their marriage sustains him. Max’s translation of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution reinvigorates his friendship with the exiled leader, although during Max’s visit to Prinkipo Island the men nearly come to blows over their different interpretations of dialectic materialism. Max publishes more poetry, a book on literature and science, an edition of Marx’s writings, and Artists in Uniform, a critique of the totalitarian takeover of literature in the Soviet Union. He collaborates on the innovative documentary Tsar to Lenin, while Enjoyment of Laughter, his second book on humor, becomes a best-seller. Max’s scathing review of Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon leads to a well-publicized fistfight between the two men. Worried about the Soviet infiltration of American life, Max is keeping lists of suspected communists in the U.S. and acts as the host of the popular radio show Word Game.

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.

U.S. & Soviet Agriculture

Worldview ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (12) ◽  
pp. 8-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lester R. Brown
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Grain Trade ◽  
Oil Exports ◽  
The World ◽  
Trading Partners ◽  
Economic Considerations ◽  
The U.S

Each day two 20,000-ton freighters loaded with grain leave the United States for the Soviet Union. This flow of grain between two major adversaries is influenced by economic considerations such as the size of the Soviet grain deficit, the U.S. capacity to supply, and the Soviet ability to pay. Political considerations include the risk to both trading partners of such a heavy interdependence, whether as supplier or market.Never before has a country dominated the world grain trade as the United States does today. Its 55 per cent share of world grain exports in 1981 easily overshadows Saudi Arabia's 24 per cent share of world oil exports in 1978. And while the amount of oil traded internationally has been falling since 1979, grain shipments are continuing to grow.

The Thirty—Third Year of the World Court

1955 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manley O. Hudson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Advisory Opinion ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
International Court ◽  
History Of

The history of the International Court of Justice in its thirty-third year is contained in narrow compass. It is chiefly confined to one judgment rendered by the Court in the Case of the Monetary Gold Removed From Borne in 1943, and to the advisory opinion given by the Court on the Effect of Awards Made By the United Nations Administrative Tribunal. Apart from these, in the Nottebohm Case between Liechtenstein and Guatemala, the time for the rejoinder of Guatemala to be filed was extended for one month, to November 2, 1954. Action was taken by the Court ordering that the “Électricité de Beyrouth” Company Case be removed from the list at the request of the French Government; the Court also ordered that two cases brought by the United States against Hungary and the Soviet Union, relating to the Treatment in Hungary of Aircraft and Crew of United States of America, should be removed from the list for lack of jurisdiction.

The Window of Vulnerability That Wasn't: Soviet Military Buildup in the 1970s—A Research Note

2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavel Podvig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
The United States ◽  
Intelligence Community ◽  
Military Buildup ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Exchange ◽  
The U.S

The Soviet strategic modernization program of the 1970s was one of the most consequential developments of the Cold War. Deployment of new intercontinental ballistic missiles and the dramatic increase in the number of strategic warheads in the Soviet arsenal created a sense of vulnerability in the United States that was, to a large degree, responsible for the U.S. military buildup of the late 1970s and early 1980s and the escalation of Cold War tensions during that period. U.S. assessments concluded that the Soviet Union was seeking to achieve a capability to fight and win a nuclear war. Estimates of missile accuracy and silo hardness provided by the U.S. intelligence community led many in the United States to conclude that the Soviet Union was building a strategic missile force capable of destroying most U.S. missiles in a counterforce strike and of surviving a subsequent nuclear exchange. Soviet archival documents that have recently become available demonstrate that this conclusion was wrong. The U.S. estimates substantially overestimated the accuracy of the Soviet Union's missiles and the degree of silo reinforcement. As the data demonstrate, the Soviet missile force did not have the capability to launch a successful first strike. Moreover, the data strongly suggest that the Soviet Union never attempted to acquire a first-strike capability, concentrating instead on strategies based on retaliation.

The Nixon Doctrine and U.S. Relations with the Republic of Afghanistan, 1973–1978: Stuck in the Middle with Daoud

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 4-41
Author(s):  
Gregory Winger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Officers ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The U.S

The overthrow of the monarchy in Afghanistan in 1973 was a seminal moment in the country's history and in U.S. policy in Central Asia. The return of Mohamed Daoud Khan to power was aided by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA, the Communist party) and military officers trained in the Soviet Union. Even as Communism was making its first substantive gains in Afghanistan, the United States was wrestling with how best to pursue its strategy of containment. Stung by the experience of Vietnam, President Richard Nixon concluded that the United States could not unilaterally respond to every instance of Communist expansion. In the turbulent years that followed, U.S. diplomacy and Daoud's desire for nonalignment combined to mitigate Soviet influence in Afghanistan. However, the U.S. triumph was fleeting insofar as Daoud's shift toward nonalignment triggered the erosion of Soviet-Afghan relations, culminating in the overthrow of his government and the final ascension of the PDPA.

Same As It Ever Was: Nuclear Alarmism, Proliferation, and the Cold War

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis J. Gavin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Proliferation ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nuclear Arms Race ◽  
Nuclear History ◽  
The Cold War

A widely held and largely unchallenged view among many scholars and policymakers is that nuclear proliferation is the gravest threat facing the United States today, that it is more dangerous than ever, and that few meaningful lessons can be drawn from the nuclear history of a supposed simpler and more predictable period, the Cold War. This view, labeled “nuclear alarmism,” is based on four myths about the history of the nuclear age. First, today's nuclear threats are new and more dangerous than those of the past. Second, unlike today, nuclear weapons stabilized international politics during the Cold War, when in fact the record was mixed. The third myth conflates the history of the nuclear arms race with the geopolitical and ideological competition between the Soviet Union and the United States, creating an oversimplified and misguided portrayal of the Cold War. The final myth is that the Cold War bipolar military rivalry was the only force driving nuclear proliferation. A better understanding of this history, and, in particular, of how and why the international community escaped calamity during a far more dangerous time against ruthless and powerful adversaries, can produce more effective U.S. policies than those proposed by the nuclear alarmists.

The “Yellow Peril” and the Asia-Pacific War

2021 ◽  
pp. 135-160
Author(s):  
Alexander D. Barder
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Pacific War ◽  
Japanese Empire ◽  
Yellow Peril ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western Imagination

This chapter explores the history of racialized threats and fears of Asia in the Western imagination. It shows that the discourse of the “yellow peril” can be understood as a process of world-making of “Asian” alterity through ideas of threat and insecurity; it is a discourse of anxiety wherein the global racial imaginary is seen as being in crisis and what potentially replaces it is a world of disorder and violence. The second section of the chapter then examines how both the Japanese and the Americans engaged in the racialization of each other: first, in terms of how the Japanese empire itself internalized its own version of racial order in response to the global racial imaginary; second, for the United States, as a way of intensifying the violence against a racial other, which can be traced back to the settler colonial plans of the nineteenth century. I conclude the chapter by showing how the global racial imaginary functioned within the United States during the early Cold War period by representing the Soviet Union as the Asiatic other.

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