The Homeland Debate, Redux: The Political–Cultural Impact of the 1946–1949 Repatriation to Soviet Armenia

2020 ◽  
pp. 84-125
Author(s):  
Tsolin Nalbantian
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Armenian Identity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Heating Up

Chapter 2 deals with the 1946-1949 Soviet repatriation drive to collect all worldwide Armenians and “return” them to the ASSR and, specifically, the Lebanese Armenian political-cultural understandings of it. I explore how that initiative formed a chapter of Lebanese (and other Middle Eastern) Armenians’ renegotiation of national belonging in early post-colonial times. And although about a third of all Armenian repatriates travelled via Beirut, I also look at those who remained in Lebanon and in other countries in the Middle East. The emerging Cold War was more than a backdrop to this story. Heating up, the Cold War – and the very divergent readings of, and responses to, the repatriation initiative among Lebanese Armenians – reinforced tensions between Armenian rightists and leftists. Armenians’ response to repatriation did not simply reflect their extant political-cultural positions. Rather, repatriation sharpened those positions. Responses to repatriation echoed issues on the changing Lebanese/Syrian/Armenian identity complex at the dawn of the post-colonial nation-state. The responses to repatriation included a retelling and a reconstitution of the history of the tragedy of the genocide. They also automatically triggered questions about the location and nature of the Armenian homeland, adding fuel to the division between Dashnaks and Armenian leftists.

Louis Menand: The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. 2001. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 546 pp.

2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-204
Author(s):  
Lance Kenney
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cold War ◽  
William James ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
Oliver Wendell Holmes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Charles Peirce ◽  
The Cold War

Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club, daunting in its choice of subject matter, closely aligns itself with the ancient sense of the word ‘history’ as a fluid, almost epic narrative. The Metaphysical Club of the title was a conversation group that met in Cambridge for a few months in 1872. Its membership roster listed some of the greatest intellectuals of the day: Charles Peirce, William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Chauncey Wright, amongst others. There is no record of the Club’s discussions or debates—in fact, the only direct reference to the Club is made by Peirce in a letter written thirty-five years later. Menand utilizes the Club as a jumping-off point for a sweeping analysis of the beliefs of the day. The subtitle of the book belies its true mission: ‘a story of ideas in America.’ Menand discusses the intellectual and social conditions that helped shape these men by the time they were members of the Club. He then shows the philosophical, political, and cultural impact that these men went on to have. In doing so, Menand traces a history of ideas in the United States from immediately prior to the Civil War to the beginning of the Cold War.

Prologue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter D. McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Intangible Heritage ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Print Literacy

The section introduces Part II, which spans the period 1946 to 2014, by tracing the history of the debates about culture within UNESCO from 1947 to 2009. It considers the central part print literacy played in the early decades, and the gradual emergence of what came to be called ‘intangible heritage’; the political divisions of the Cold War that had a bearing not just on questions of the state and its role as a guardian of culture but on the idea of cultural expression as a commodity; the slow shift away from an exclusively intellectualist definition of culture to a more broadly anthropological one; and the realpolitik surrounding the debates about cultural diversity since the 1990s. The section concludes by showing how at the turn of the new millennium UNESCO caught up with the radical ways in which Tagore and Joyce thought about linguistic and cultural diversity.

Algeria: Military Past as Prologue

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul E. Lenze, Jr.
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The State ◽  
Foreseeable Future ◽  
Military Rule ◽  
Military Involvement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

Algeria is a state in the Maghreb that has been dominated by military rule for the majority of its existence. The National People’s Army (ANP) used nationalism to justify its intervention into politics while ensuring that withdrawal would occur only if national identity were protected. Algeria, similar to other Middle Eastern states, underwent historical trajectories influenced by colonialism, the Cold War, and post-9/11 politics; briefly experimented with democracy; and as a result, experienced the military as the dominant institution in the state. The resignation of Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika after 20 years of rule in April 2019, following six weeks of popular protest, has raised questions as to whether democratization is possible. Algeria’s history of military involvement in politics, the strength of the military as an institution, and its cooperative links with domestic elites and international actors portend the endurance of authoritarianism for the foreseeable future.

Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War: Some Reflections on the 1945–8 Conjuncture

1988 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Bethell ◽  
Ian Roxborough
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

The importance of the years of political and social upheaval immediately following the end of the Second World War and coinciding with the beginnings of the Cold War, that is to say, the period from 1944 or 1945 to 1948 or 1949, for the history of Europe (East and West), the Near and Middle East, Asia (Japan, China, South and East Asia), even Africa (certainly South Africa) in the second half of the twentieth century has long been generally recognised. In recent years historians of the United States, which had not, of course, been a theatre of war and which alone among the major belligerents emerged from the Second World War stronger and more prosperous, have begun to focus attention on the political, social and ideological conflict there in the postwar period – and the long term significance for the United States of the basis on which it was resolved. In contrast, except for Argentina, where Perón's rise to power has always attracted the interest of historians, the immediate postwar years in Latin America, which had been relatively untouched by, and had played a relatively minor role in, the Second World War, remain to a large extent neglected. It is our view that these years constituted a critical conjuncture in the political and social history of Latin America just as they did for much of the rest of the world. In a forthcoming collection of case studies, which we are currently editing, the main features of the immediate postwar period in Latin America, and especially the role played by labour and the Left, will be explored in some detail, country by country.1In this article, somewhat speculative and intentionally polemical, we present the broad outlines of our thesis.

The Middle Eastern Cold War: Unique Dynamics in a Questionable Regional Framework

2011 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 320-322
Author(s):  
Jeffrey James Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
International History ◽  
War Narrative ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Ideological Identity

One of the more prominent themes to emerge from this roundtable is the desire to integrate the history of the modern Middle East with broader trends in international history, particularly with regard to the recent emphasis on “decentralizing” and “globalizing” the Cold War narrative. My own research interests are consistent with this approach, as one of the central concerns of my current project is to show how Algeria's revolutionary nationalists defied the regional categories imposed on them from the outside by pursuing overlapping diplomatic initiatives under the rubrics of Maghribi unity, African unity, Arab unity, Afro-Asianism, and Third Worldism. After independence in 1962, the Algerian foreign ministry's main geographical divisions differed significantly from those used by the U.S. State Department—and most history departments’ hiring committees—by dividing the world into “the West,” “the Socialist Countries,” “the Arab World,” “Africa,” and “Latin America/Asia.” These categories were the product of both practical considerations and ideological/identity politics on the part of Algeria's new leaders, and to my mind suggest that the “Middle East” may itself be a particularly arbitrary and misleading geographical framework, even in comparison to other parts of the developing world where European imperialism exerted a heavy cartographical influence.

The Symbolism of Subversion: Notes on Some Cold War Icons

1972 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Weinstein
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Cold War

‘Ours is an era of “cases”,’ Diana Trilling wrote several years ago, ‘starting with the Sacco-Vanzetti case in the 1920s, proceeding through the Hiss and Oppenheimer cases to the Rosenberg case, the Chessman case, the Eichmann case, and [the subject of Mrs Trilling's essay]…culminating…in the Profumo case.’ We could add several since then, of course, and her chronology is misleading – the Rosenbergs having followed Hiss but preceded Oppenheimer – but Mrs Trilling's point, that such cases and others provoked within their society basic ‘confrontation(s) between opposing social principles’, remains valid. The Hiss, Rosenberg and Oppenheimer episodes were American society's most controversial post-World War II security cases. Each in turn dramatized the political and cultural impact of the Cold War for large numbers of Americans. They serve as useful paradigms, when examined together, for studying the process by which complex problems of evidence are reduced to compelling images of an event. Almost from the moment the ‘facts’ emerged in each case they congealed, first into partisan accounts and then into minor mythologies, in which each case became the subject-matter for a simple morality tale. Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Robert Oppenheimer, and the supporting caste in each drama achieved, in their own time, the status of icons in the demonologies and hagiographies of the opposing camps. Looking recently through the dreary record of trials and hearings connected with security problems during the Truman-Eisenhower era, I found certain continuities in the appraisal by intellectuals and politicians of these three otherwise singular episodes.

Tashkent ‘68: A Cinematic Contact Zone

Slavic Review ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rossen Djagalov ◽  
Masha Salazkina
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Third World ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Third ◽  
Independence Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractThis essay seeks to reconstruct the history of the first Tashkent Festival of Cinemas of Asia and Africa (1968). It offers an account of the festival as a highly heterogeneous and productive site for better understanding the complex relationship between the Soviet bloc and the Third World in the crucial moment between the victory of post-colonial independence movement and the end of the Cold War.

The Cold War and the Middle East

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salim Yaqub
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Oil Reserves ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Decisive Advantage

This chapter, which examines the history of the Cold War in the Middle East. It explains that the Cold War in the Middle East was never a contest between equals and explains that Western powers always enjoyed a decisive advantage. Despite this, they were not able to retain outright control over the oil reserves and strategic positions of the region, and only succeeded in maintaining access to them through cooperative local regimes. This chapter also describes how the Cold War accentuated existing patterns in Middle Eastern geopolitics and how the great powers enhanced the ability of local actors to pursue rivalries.

Symbiosis and Revolution: The Soviet Encounter with the War in Dhofar

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Philipp Casula
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Press ◽  
Revolutionary Movements ◽  
The Cold War

This article discusses how the Soviet Union perceived and related to Middle Eastern revolutionary movements, using a case study from South Yemen and the War in Dhofar. This specific Soviet encounter will be analysed through selected Soviet material from published and archival sources. The article highlights how Soviet representatives assessed prospects for socialism in Yemen, and how they interacted with their partners on the ground. The article is divided into three parts: the first discusses the theoretical debates in Soviet academia and the press, the second section contrasts these theoretical views with Middle Eastern ‘socialist’ theories during the Cold War and the third shows how a symbiosis developed between Soviet and Yemeni institutions and organisations. The article argues that due to an Orientalist take on South Yemen and Dhofar, the Soviet side could not appreciate the political importance and potential of socialist currents in the region, reducing cooperation to ‘pragmatism’.

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