Dina Fainberg: Ordinary Russians and Average Americans: Cold War International Correspondents describe “regular people” on the other side of the iron curtain

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The Other ◽  
Iron Curtain

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Feinberg
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The Other ◽  
Weight Of Evidence ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Asking Questions ◽  
The Cold War

Histories of the Cold War have often been preoccupied with issues of accountability and intent. Such histories have generally focused on leading political actors and concerned themselves with issues that implicitly or explicitly pitted one camp against another, asking questions such as: Who was responsible for starting the Cold War? Who made key decisions? Who won and who lost? This study has been motivated by a different set of concerns. Rather than setting one side against the other, it has examined the Cold War as a shared political environment and tried to illuminate some of the ways a political culture that relied on moral absolutes affected patterns of thought on both sides of the Iron Curtain. It has tried to expand the question of who knew what and when by shifting the focus to how knowledge about Eastern Europe was produced, showing how some experiences took on the weight of evidence, whereas others seemingly provoked little thought....

Hollywood Film behind the Iron Curtain: Cold War Nostalgias in Chuck Norris vs Communism (2015)

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
OANA GODEANU-KENWORTHY
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Black Market ◽  
The Other ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

This article focusses on the American reception of a British–Romanian documentary about the black market for VHS Hollywood films in 1980s Romania. The film uses two different registers of nostalgia. On the one hand, it functions as an ostalgic media product that engages Eastern European viewers by building upon a sense of continuity with the socialist past. On the other hand, its surprising success in the American conservative blogosphere reveals the endurance of Cold War exceptionalist tropes. My analysis expands current discussions of post-socialist nostalgia, arguing for the relevance of the concept of ostalgia for the field of American studies.

scholarly journals The Conspiracy of Brainwashing: the Experiences of the First and the Second Cold War

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gintaras Aleknonis
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Information Security ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
The Other ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
The West ◽  
Potential Loss ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
Political Understanding ◽  
Principle Objective

With the recent rise of a new confrontation between the East and the West, the convergence of different understandings of brainwashing emerges as a problem of political communication and poses a challenge for information security. The principle objective of this paper is to present a contemporary understanding of brainwashing, determine its propaganda potential, and provide educated guesses about successor concepts, which could be traced back to the origins of brainwashing. Therefore, the article describes the ‘classical’ Western understanding of brainwashing; looks for the potential equivalents of brainwashing on the other side of the Iron Curtain; reveals the rebirth and transformations of the concept in post-communist countries during the period of time, when brainwashing in the West had already came out of fashion; notes to the potential misunderstandings between the new and old democracies, which arise because of the different interpretation of brainwashing.The contemporary comprehension of brainwashing continues to alternate between instrumental and political understanding. The broadened concept becomes more blurred, although the lack of precision compensates the potential loss of mystery and allows the brainwashing to preserve an image of an almighty technique.

Europe's Cold War

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jussi M. Hanhimäki
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Cold War

In 1945, much of Europe was in rubble, following an orgy of violence and genocide unprecedented in recorded history. This alone provides one explanation for the phenomenal rise of Soviet and American power in Europe after World War II. And given the ideological differences, material capabilities, security interests, and contrasting personalities of those in power, it was no wonder that any possibility of cooperation between the Soviet Union and the United States vanished after the common objective of defeating the Axis powers had been achieved. While the Cold War may not have been inevitable, it would have been difficult to avoid. This article explores the evolution of transatlantic relations during the Cold War, with particular emphasis on Geir Lundestad's thesis about ‘empire by invitation’. It then turns to the other side of the Cold War divide and evaluates the supposed omnipotence of the Soviet Union over its client states. The article also examines the cracks in the Iron Curtain – the evolution of relations between, beneath, and beyond the two blocs in Europe.

NATO in Balkan’s Late Twenties Tide

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 135
Author(s):  
Xhavit Sadrijaj
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Foreign Minister ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The Cold War

NATO did not intervene in the Balkans to overcome Yugoslavia, or destroy it, but above all to avoid violence and to end discrimination. (Shimon Peres, the former Israeli foreign minister, winner of Nobel Prize for peace) NATO’s intervention in the Balkans is the most historic case of the alliance since its establishment. After the Cold War or the "Fall of the Iron Curtain" NATO somehow lost the sense of existing since its founding reason no longer existed. The events of the late twenties in the Balkans, strongly brought back the alliance proving the great need for its existence and defining dimensions and new concepts of security and safety for the alliance in those tangled international relations.

Comparative Area Studies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Berg-Schlosser
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Ivory Coast ◽  
Qualitative Comparative Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
International Context ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Cross Area Studies ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Analytical Approaches

Area studies have undergone significant changes over the last two decades. They have been transformed from mostly descriptive accounts in the international context of the Cold War to theory-oriented and methodological analytical approaches. More recent comparative methods such as “Qualitative Comparative Analysis” (QCA) and related approaches, which are particularly suitable for medium N studies, have significantly contributed to this development. This essay discusses the epistemological background of this approach as well as recent developments. It provides two examples of current “cross area studies,” one concerned with successful democratic transformations across four regions (Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and East Asia), the other with political participation in marginalized settlements in four countries (Brazil, Chile, Ivory Coast, Kenya) in a multilevel analysis. The conclusion points to the theoretical promises of this approach and its practical-political relevance.

The Futurists. Experts in World Futures

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Andersson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Other ◽  
Futures Studies ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Images Of The Future ◽  
The Way

Alvin Toffler’s writings encapsulated many of the tensions of futurism: the way that futurology and futures studies oscillated between forms of utopianism and technocracy with global ambitions, and between new forms of activism, on the one hand, and emerging forms of consultancy and paid advice on the other. Paradoxically, in their desire to create new images of the future capable of providing exits from the status quo of the Cold War world, futurists reinvented the technologies of prediction that they had initially rejected, and put them at the basis of a new activity of futures advice. Consultancy was central to the field of futures studies from its inception. For futurists, consultancy was a form of militancy—a potentially world altering expertise that could bypass politics and also escaped the boring halls of academia.

‘There shall be no musical servitude’: Towards a Multitudinous Shostakovich in the West

2020 ◽  
Vol 145 (2) ◽  
pp. 495-505
Author(s):  
EIRINI DIAMANTOULI
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War

Ideologically motivated attempts to elucidate Shostakovich’s political views and to determine whether and how they may be coded into his compositions have come to characterize the Western reception of the composer’s works since his death in 1975. Fuelled by the political oppositions of the cold war, Shostakovich’s posthumous reputation in the West has been largely shaped by two conflicting perspectives. These have positioned him on the one hand as a secret dissident, bent and broken under the unbearable strain of totalitarianism, made heroic through his veiled musical resistance to Communism; and on the other hand as a composer compromised by his capitulation to the regime – represented in an anachronistic musical style. Both perspectives surrender Shostakovich and his music to a crude oversimplification driven by vested political interests. Western listeners thus conditioned are primed to hear either the coded dissidence of a tragic victim of Communist brutality or the sinister submission of a ‘loyal son of the Communist Party’.1 For those prepared to accept Shostakovich as a ‘tragic victim’, the publication of his purported memoirs in 1979, ‘as related to and edited by’ the author Solomon Volkov, presents a tantalizing conclusion: bitterly yet discreetly scornful of the Stalinist regime, Shostakovich was indeed a secret dissident and this dissidence was made tangible in his music.

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