Introduction

Author(s):  
Lisa Jakelski

The introduction presents the book’s primary themes and concepts: music and the Cold War, the roles institutions and networks have played in shaping musical practices, Stephen Greenblatt’s model of cultural mobility, and Howard Becker’s model of the art world. It gives relevant background information on the history of new music institutions in the twentieth century, as well as a concise account of the development of state socialism in postwar Poland. It also provides an overview of the book’s structure as well as brief summaries of the chapters. The introduction explains that book’s first half examines the festival’s organization and reception in Poland, whereas the latter half explores the Warsaw Autumn’s worldwide ramifications.

2021 ◽  
pp. 600-616
Author(s):  
Árpád von Klimó

Central Europe is still imagined as an area dominated by Christianity, for the most part the Catholic Church, in close alliance with Christian rulers who minimized the impact of both the Protestant Reformation and minorities such as Judaism. This idea rests, however, on an oversimplified picture of the religious history of the region. Recent research has shown that the reality was more complex, and that historians still know very little about what the overwhelming majority of people believed or how they practised their religion. Christianity has never completely monopolized the religious landscape of Central Europe and has itself been constantly changing. The history of Christianization, Reformation, empires, and nationalism present in Central Europe as well as state socialism, the Cold War and today’s relative pluralism give an idea of this complexity.


2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 547-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRUCE KUKLICK

George A. Reisch, How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science: To the Icy Slopes of Logic (Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, 2005)Scott Soames, Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century. Vol. 1, The Dawn of Analysis; Vol. 2, The Age of Meaning (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2003)Although How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science is narrower in scope, the two books included in this review by and large cover the same ground—the history of anglophone philosophy in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, the two authors occupy two different universes, and it is instructive to examine the issues and styles of thought that separate their comprehension of analytic philosophy.


Author(s):  
William Klinger ◽  
Denis Kuljis

This groundbreaking biography of Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia presents many startling new revelations, among them his role as an international revolutionary leader and his relationship with Winston Churchill. It highlights his early years as a Comintern operative, the context for his later politics as a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). The authors argue that in the 1940s, between the dissolution of the Comintern and the rise of NAM, Tito's influence and ambition were far wider than has been understood, extending to Italy, France, Greece and Spain via the international communist networks established during the Spanish Civil War. The book discloses for the first time the connection between Tito's expulsion from the Cominform and the Rome assassination attempt on the Italian Communist Party leader, Palmiro Togliatti — the man who had plotted to overthrow Tito. The book offers a pivotal contribution to our understanding of Tito as a figure of real, rather than imagined, global significance. The book will reward those who are interested in the history of international Communism, the Cold War and the Non-Aligned Movement, or in Tito the man — one of the most significant leaders of the twentieth century.


Author(s):  
Timothy Nunan

This chapter offers a brief history of how the thought of Mountstuart Elphinstone was received among Soviet scholars of Afghanistan. The connection may not be obvious at first, but Russian language scholarship on Afghanistan outpaced that in any other language from the early twentieth century onward owing to the special nature of Soviet-Afghan relations following the October Revolution and Afghan independence. Likewise, close Soviet-Afghan relations during the Cold War – culminating in the decade-long occupation of the country by the Soviet Army – framed the context for later Soviet scholarship on the country. This chapter demonstrates that "Elphinstonian epistemes" very much had an afterlife in Soviet scholarship on the country, because many authors were misled about the identity of the Afghan state in Kabul with Pashtun populations on both sides of the Durand Line. Worse, these readings of Afghanistan had intermingled with crude readings about the "revolutionary" nature of Afghan Communists and their opponents. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, attentive scholars urged more nuanced concepts to make sense of Afghanistan, but as this chapter demonstrates, Elphinstonian tropes very much framed the Soviet romance with – and disaster in – twentieth century Afghanistan.


2021 ◽  
pp. 37-56
Author(s):  
Ashley Scott Kelly ◽  
Xiaoxuan Lu

AbstractThis chapter, From land-locked to land-linked? Laos within a continuum of connectivity in the Mekong region, constructs a history of infrastructure-building in Laos understood through economic connectivity. This chapter challenges the dominant narrative of a de-historicized, often linear progression from land-locked to land-linked or from isolation to integration by contextualizing the contemporary imaginations and developments of Laos within the broader social, economic and political transitions across the Mekong region. We examine the malleable identities of “Laos,” “border” and “infrastructure” in the strategic importance of the Mekong region and the struggles to control and reshape its interconnectivity, especially during the period between colonial-era obscuration and more recent revitalization of the Southern Silk Road. Rather than comprehensive or strictly chronological, this chapter focuses on three loosely defined historical periods: the colonial period from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, the Cold War period from the mid-twentieth century to late 1980s, and the post-Cold War period from the late 1980s until the present day. We ground the distinct histories of these periods in discourses specific to their times and places, each with their own geographic conception of the Mekong region and particular combination of socioeconomic and geopolitical imperatives driving investment in large-scale infrastructure projects.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wildan Sena Utama

This article discusses the roots of the Bandung Conference of 1955 by tracing the alliance of Asian and African worldwide internationalism and anti-imperialism that existed since the early twentieth century. It attempts to show that although the conference emerged during the height of the Cold War, the network behind this alliance had gradually developed since the interwar period. The solidarity of this alliance lay in the common history of the colonized people that struggled to become sovereign. Contacts, meetings and conferences that took place in Europe and Asia juxtaposed the anti-imperialist movement of Asian and African countries. This article argues that the Bandung Conference 1955 was the culmination of relationships and connections of an Afro-Asian group who had been long oppressed by colonialism, racism and class superiority.


Author(s):  
Lisa Jakelski

This book presents a social analysis of new music dissemination at the Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music, one of the first and most important venues for East-West cultural contact during the Cold War. The festival’s stylistically diverse programs ranged from Soviet-sponsored socialist realism to the modernism of the Western avant-garde. It also facilitated encounters between people (performers, composers, critics, arts administrators, government functionaries, and general audiences) from both sides of the Cold War. Drawing on Howard Becker’s model of the art world, and Stephen Greenblatt’s model of cultural mobility, the book contends that the performance of social interactions in particular institutional frameworks (such as music festivals) have shaped the practices, values, and concepts associated with “new” music (or “contemporary” music). Moreover, the book contests static notions of East-West division and challenges the metaphor of an impermeable “Iron Curtain.” Chapters 1-3 examine the Warsaw Autumn’s institutional organization, negotiation, and reception in socialist Poland during the post-Stalin Thaw. Chapters 4-6 consider the festival’s worldwide ramifications, particularly the ways that it contributed to the performance of cultural diplomacy, engendered international and transnational ties, sparked change within the Eastern Bloc, assisted the globalization of avant-garde ideas, and facilitated the cross-border circulation of people, objects, and ideas. The epilogue briefly considers how new music is being defined and disseminated in post-socialist Poland.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document