Daily Life of the American Embassy in Czechoslovakia in 1945—1948

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6 (104)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Valery Yungblyud

The article is devoted to the study of various aspects of daily life of the US Embassy in Czechoslovakia in 1945—1948. The author considers the main areas of its work, major problems and difficulties that American diplomats had to overcome being in difficult conditions of the post-war economic recovery and international tension growth. Special attention is paid to the role of Ambassador L. A. Steinhardt, his methods of leadership, interactions with subordinates, with the Czechoslovak authorities and the State Department. This allows to reveal some new aspects of American diplomacy functioning, as well as to identify poorly explored factors that influenced American politics in Central Europe during the years when the Cold War was brewing and tensions between Moscow and Washington were rising. The article is based on unpublished primary sources from the American archives.

Author(s):  
Elizabeth Rechniewski

The immediate post-World War Two period was marked by the consensus across the major French political parties that the retention of the empire was a vital component in the nation’s bid to recover its role in the world. This consensus extended to the French Communist Party (PCF) that had emerged as the largest post-war party and participated in the tripartite governments of the IVth Republic until May 1947. The support or lack of support that the PCF gave to independence movements in the French colonies has been widely studied in relation to Indochina and Algeria. However very little has been published on its role in the UN Trust Territory of French Cameroon, where a widely supported independence movement, the Union des populations du Cameroun (UPC) sought to free the territory from French control. The focus of this article is on the evolution of PCF policy towards the colonies and on the relations between the UPC and the PCF in the crucial years 1947-57 that led up to the independence of Cameroon, through an analysis of articles in the communist press, correspondence between the two ‘fraternal’ parties, and reports by French authorities. The path that led to the suppression of the UPC in Cameroon must be understood in the context of the role of the other major players in this Cold War confrontation: the USSR and the US, the UN and the international community more broadly, and successive French governments.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Jenness

This paper explores the way American intellectuals depicted Sigmund Freud during the peak of popularity and prestige of psychoanalysis in the US, roughly the decade and a half following World War II. These intellectuals insisted upon the unassailability of Freud's mind and personality. He was depicted as unsusceptible to any external force or influence, a trait which was thought to account for Freud's admirable comportment as a scientist, colleague and human being. This post-war image of Freud was shaped in part by the Cold War anxiety that modern individuality was imperilled by totalitarian forces, which could only be resisted by the most rugged of selves. It was also shaped by the unique situation of the intellectuals themselves, who were eager to position themselves, like the Freud they imagined, as steadfastly independent and critical thinkers who would, through the very clarity of their thought, lead America to a more robust democracy.


Author(s):  
A. Dolinkiy

Education exchanges are a key element of public diplomacy for most countries that considered effective in that domain of foreign policy activities. Education exchanges are attributed an important role in the post-war peace settlement between Germany and France and in determining the outcome of the Cold war. Relevant aspects of public diplomacy remain key elements of foreign policy instruments of the US, Germany and many other countries. Russia has been increasingly active in public diplomacy in the past decade and the role of education exchanges has been increasing which is also demonstrated by a growing number of expert publications on the subject. However the strategy, the quality of organization and the use of modern technologies remain at a relatively low level which leads to an inefficient use of resources. Priority issues that can be a core of Russia's public diplomacy (and foreign policy in general). Moreover, systemic work would be required to evaluate efficiency of current and complete projects which would allow determine effectiveness of programs and appropriateness of resources used. Education exchanges need to be targeted at both bringing international students to Russia and assisting Russian students to study internationally and professors to teach abroad. Finally, international best practices show that there is a need to maintain connections with international exchanges alumni and assist them to maintain connections with each other including with the use of modern technologies.


2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (145) ◽  
pp. 519-532
Author(s):  
Jan Benedix

The Information Revolution has leveraged the attention which the academic discourse is paying to the impacts of information and communication technologies, although aspects of how to conceptualize these impacts theoretically are insufficient. Focusing on the role of IT during the rearmament of the US-military since the end of the Cold War a neogramscian perspective on the genesis and diffusion of IT as “political project” is outlined. IT gives a new model of warfare and contributes to the significant consent which the rearmament of the US-military has gained among US-citizens.


2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 411-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Turchetti

The US monopoly of information regarding nuclear weapons was one of the distinctive features of the early Cold War. It encouraged US officials to bolster their country’s hegemonic role in post-war affairs, something that scholars have previously referred to in terms of “atomic diplomacy.” This paper shows that Cold War atomic diplomacy originated in an ancestral form of what we call today “science diplomacy,” distinctive of wartime allied relations during WW2. It first explores how science became a distinctive feature of wartime diplomacy by looking at agreements regarding exchanges of information and collaboration that shaped the relations between wartime allies (US, UK, and the Soviet Union). It then shows that their signing (and, at times, their rejection) eventually paved the way to conflicting views within allied administrations on what to share, making their officials less inclined to pool more knowledge toward the end of WW2. In conclusion, US monopolistic stances and atomic diplomacy originated in these disagreements, also marking the demise of wartime science diplomacy. This essay is part of a special issue entitled Science Diplomacy, edited by Giulia Rispoli and Simone Turchetti.


2019 ◽  
pp. 241-244
Author(s):  
John Mulqueen

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War caused ructions in the WP; the party split in 1992 when ‘reformers’ broke away to create Democratic Left. The ‘reformers’ contended that the WP should become ‘a reconstituted party affirming its adherence to the rule of law’. The ‘reformers’, or ‘liquidators’, who included six of its seven parliamentary deputies, were accused of attempting to destroy the WP. What was left of the ‘revolutionary’ party retained its Cold War assumptions, pointing the finger at the CIA, no less, claiming that it might have had a role in fomenting the split. Drawing a global picture, the WP highlighted the ‘counter-revolutionary’ role of the US in such countries as Cuba, Vietnam, Angola, and Grenada. The reformers highlighted the WP’s ‘historical baggage’ and association with ‘criminality’ – the Official IRA.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Kathleen R. McNamara ◽  
Abraham L. Newman

Abstract Analysis of the post-COVID world tends to gravitate to one of two poles. For some, the pandemic is a crisis that will reshuffle the decks, producing a fundamental reordering of global politics. For others, the basic principles of the international order are likely to remain much the same, driven largely by the emerging bipolar system between the US and China. We find both narratives dissatisfying, as the former overinterprets the causal role of the pandemic itself, while the latter underappreciates the critical ways in which global politics have been transformed beyond the state-centered system of the Cold War. We argue instead that the pandemic exposes underlying trends already at work and forces scholars to open the aperture on how we study globalization. Most centrally, we contend that globalization needs to be seen not just as a distributional game of winners and losers but rather a more profoundly transformational game that reshapes identities, redefines channels of power and authority, and generates new sites for contentious politics. We draw on emerging work to sketch out a theoretical frame for thinking about the politics of globalization, and assess some of the key policy arenas where COVID-19 is accelerating the transformative effects of globalization. In so doing, we suggest a roadmap to a post-pandemic research agenda for studying global markets that more fully captures these transformations and their implications for world politics.


2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 963-988 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL OTTOLENGHI

Historiographical accounts of Harry Truman's recognition of Israel have placed undue importance on this apparently sudden act on 14 May 1948. US Palestine policy has not been placed in the correct historical context of the Cold War. As a ‘Cold War consensus’ developed in Washington in the early post-war period, Palestine emerged as a secondary issue to the major concern that was the ‘Northern Tier’ of Greece, Turkey, and Iran. The US was guided by broad but clear objectives in Palestine: the attainment of a peaceful solution, a desire not to implicate US troops, and the denial of the region to the Soviets. Disagreements between the White House and the State Department were all expressed within these broad policy objectives. Israeli sources have been significant by their absence in the existing historiography of recognition. These sources reveal that for the Jewish community in Palestine, diplomatic victories were of secondary importance to the practical achievement of statehood. From both a Washington perspective, and the perspective from Palestine, US recognition was not regarded as a crucial issue at the time. It was a decision taken within the context of broad US objectives in Palestine, and it did not influence the decision of the Yishuv to declare statehood.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 370-395
Author(s):  
Alexander Anievas ◽  
Richard Saull

Abstract This article intervenes in IR debates on the origins and character of the postwar liberal international order. Dominant theorizations of the US-led Western order rest on a shared assumption of its essentially post-fascist character based on the liberal-democratic properties of its constitutive members. This article challenges this prevailing view. It does so through a critical historical and theoretical exploration of the role of far-right ideopolitical forces in the development of the liberal international order during the early Cold War period. Drawing on the concepts of “uneven and combined development” and “passive revolution” as alternative theoretical frames, the article focuses particular attention on the significance of former fascists in the workings and institutional fabric of a number of West European states and the relationship between the United States and NATO in far-right coup-plotting and violence that punctuated their national histories. Demonstrating these far-right “contributions” to the making and evolution of the Cold War order, the article offers a reconceptualization of liberal order construction and US hegemony that not only problematizes existing accounts of Cold War geopolitics but also demonstrates the structural interconnections between the far-right and liberal order-building projects that goes beyond the Cold War era.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (16) ◽  
pp. 5-29
Author(s):  
Antony Howe

By common consent one of the finest historians of his generation, Eric Hobsbawm was also a longstanding member of the British Communist Party. In particular, his formative years as a historian spanned the period from the popular front communism of the 1930s to the post-war Communist Party Historians' Group. The background and activities of the Historians' Group have been described many times, including by Hobsbawm himself. Nevertheless, in these interviews recorded between 1990 and 2001 Hobsbawm opened up regarding the role of key networks and personalities that did not always figure in accounts like his autobiography Interesting Times. Notably among them are Dona Torr and John Morris, the historian of the classical world with whom Hobsbawm launched the journal Past and Present at the height of the Cold War.


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