scholarly journals The Cold War and Western Perspectives on Soviet Science

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-175
Author(s):  
Climério Paulo da Silva Neto
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Sociology Of Science ◽  
Soviet Science ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Methodological Choices ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

This essay presents an overview of the dominant trends in the Western historiography on the Soviet Union along the Cold War inquiring how they affected the perspectives on the history of Soviet science. It discuss three major trends, namely totalitarian school, which resonated with Robert Merton and Karl Popper’s claims that science best develops in democratic societies; the revisionists, which came of age in the 1960s and resembled some schools of the sociology of science both in their motivation to subvert the dominant perspective in their discipline and in their methodological choices; and, finally, the post-Cold War and post-revisionists perspectives on Soviet history and history of Soviet science, and how they challenged widely held beliefs on Soviet science and society that underpinned many Cold War-era works on the Soviet Union. The conclusion discussed how the historiography of Soviet Science resonates with Christopher Hill’s claim that history needs to be rewritten at every generation.

From Stalin to Mao

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elidor Mëhilli
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Small Country ◽  
Political Unity ◽  
Nazi Occupation ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
East German ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

This book interprets socialism as a form of globalization by telling the unknown history of a small country that found itself entangled in some of the biggest developments of the Cold War. Within two decades, Albania went from fascist Italian rule to Nazi occupation, a brief interlude as a Yugoslav satellite, and then to a heady period of borrowings—government advisers, brand new factories, school textbooks, urban plans, and everything in between— from the Soviet Union in the 1950s. With Soviet backing, Albania’s regime launched a bold experiment: turn illiterate peasants into conscious workers. Ambitious but poor, the country also turned into a contact zone between East German engineers, Czech planners, and Hungarian geologists who came to help build socialism from scratch. Then, the socialist world shattered. During the Sino-Soviet conflict of the 1960s, Albania’s party clique switched allegiance to China, seeing in Mao’s patronage an opportunity to keep Stalinism alive. Combining an analysis of ideology with a keen sense of geopolitics, this book explores this strange connectivity of socialism, showing how socialism created a shared material and mental culture—still evident today across Eurasia—but it failed to generate political unity.

Latin American Tercermundistas in the Soviet Union

2020 ◽  
pp. 221-240
Author(s):  
Tobias Rupprecht
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Third World ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The One ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter complicates conventional understandings of Latin America’s Cold War by looking at the travels of tercermundista intellectuals and activists to all parts of the USSR. Visits of intellectuals from the global South to the Cold War Soviet Union have hardly been studied. Accounts of the history of Cold War Latin America have put the Soviet Union, as a political and intellectual point of reference, aside too readily. The early Cold War was a time of enhanced, and rather successful, Soviet attempts to present their country in a positive light towards the emerging Third World. Those Latin Americans who developed a sense of belonging with the Third World in the 1960s, this chapter demonstrates, were still susceptible to the lures of certain characteristics of the Soviet state and suggested their implementation in their home countries. The reason for the positive perception came, on the one hand, as a result of very lavishly funded and well conducted programmes for Third World visitors in the Soviet Union.

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.

Cold War consumption and the marketing of childhood in the Soviet Union and the United States, 1950-1960

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Peacock
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global Discourse ◽  
The Cold War

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the relationship between childhood, consumption and the Cold War in 1950s America and the Soviet Union. The author argues that Soviet and American leaders, businessmen, and politicians worked hard to convince parents that buying things for their children offered the easiest way to raise good American and Soviet kids and to do their part in waging the economic battles of the Cold War. The author explores how consumption became a Cold War battleground in the late 1950s and suggests that the history of childhood and Cold War consumption alters the way we understand the conflict itself. Design/Methodology/Approach – Archival research in the USA and the Russian Federation along with close readings of Soviet and American advertisements offer sources for understanding the global discourse of consumption in the 1950s and 1960s. Findings – Leaders, advertisers, and propagandists in the Soviet Union and the USA used the same images in the same ways to sell the ethos of consumption to their populations. They did this to sell the Cold War, to bolster the status quo, and to make profits. Originality/Value – This paper offers a previously unexplored, transnational perspective on the role that consumption and the image of the child played in shaping the Cold War both domestically and abroad.

scholarly journals EXPLORING AND EXPLAINING THE ECONOMIC POLITICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN IRAN AND THE SOVIET UNION IN THE SECOND PAHLAVI ERA EMPHASIZING THE SYSTEM THEORY

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimia Zare ◽  
Habibollah Saeeidinia
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International System ◽  
World War ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War

Iran and Russia have common interests, especially in political terms, because of the common borders and territorial neighborhood. This has led to a specific sensitivity to how the two countries are approaching each other. Despite the importance of the two countries' relations, it is observed that in the history of the relations between Iran and Russia, various issues and issues have always been hindered by the close relations between the two countries. The beginning of Iran-Soviet relations during the Second Pahlavi era was accompanied by issues such as World War II and subsequent events. The relations between the two countries were influenced by the factors and system variables of the international system, such as the Cold War, the US-Soviet rivalry, the Second World War and the entry of the Allies into Iran, the deconstruction of the relations between the two post-Cold War superpowers, and so on.The main question of the current research is that the political relations between Iran and Russia influenced by the second Pahlavi period?To answer this question, the hypothesis was that Iran's political economic relations were fluctuating in the second Pahlavi era and influenced by the changing system theory of the international system with the Soviet Union. The findings suggest that various variables such as the structure of the international system and international events, including World War II, the arrival of controversial forces in Iran, the Cold War, the post-Cold War, the US and Soviet policies, and the variables such as the issue of oil Azerbaijan's autonomy, Tudeh's actions in Iran, the issue of fisheries and borders. Also, the policies adopted by Iranian politicians, including negative balance policy, positive nationalism and independent national policy, have affected Iran-Soviet relations. In a general conclusion, from 1320 (1942) to 1357 (1979), the relationship between Iran and Russia has been an upward trend towards peaceful coexistence. But expansion of further relations in the economic, technical and cultural fields has been political rather than political.

The United States and the Soviet Union

2020 ◽  
pp. 138-152
Author(s):  
Matthew Kroenig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Global Peace ◽  
Otto Von Bismarck ◽  
The Cold War

Otto von Bismarck famously said that “God has special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.” Divine providence may not have hurt, but it was America’s domestic political institutions that transformed a smattering of British colonies in North America into, first, an independent nation and, then, a global superpower with a network of allies and partners spanning six continents. The United States faced off against the Soviet Union for a half century during the Cold War. But Washington possessed the better institutions, and the stress of the competition caused Moscow’s political system to collapse altogether. In the post–Cold War period that followed, Washington deepened and expanded the Pax Americana, and spread unprecedented levels of global peace, prosperity, and freedom. For the first time since Ancient Rome, a single superpower so overawed any potential competitors that great power rivalry itself came to a temporary halt.

scholarly journals Everyday Life Under Communism: Practices and Objects

2013 ◽  
Vol 68 (02) ◽  
pp. 207-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larissa Zakharova
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Consumer Goods ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Basic Consumer

Why should we consider the everyday life of ordinary citizens in their countless struggles to obtain basic consumer goods if the priorities of their leaders lay elsewhere? For years, specialists of the Soviet Union and the people's democracies neglected the history of everyday life and, like the so-called “totalitarian” school, focused on political history, seeking to grasp how power was wielded over a society that was considered immobile and subject to the state's authority. Furthermore, studies on the eastern part of Europe were dominated by political scientists who were interested in the geopolitics of the Cold War. The way the field was structured meant that little attention was paid to sociological and anthropological perspectives that sought to understand social interaction.

‘Gentlemen, you are Mad!’: Mutual Assured Destruction and Cold War Culture

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan T. Berend
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Winston Churchill ◽  
Nuclear Age ◽  
European Culture ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Lewis Mumford

In the year after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the historian and critic Lewis Mumford made a dramatic attack on the insanity of the nuclear age. In his article entitled ‘Gentlemen: You are Mad!’, Mumford said: ‘We in America are living among madmen. Madmen govern our affairs in the name of order and security’. According to Mumford, the modern superweapon society, for all its technological supremacy, was unable to recognise the looming disaster. People were sleepwalking towards the abyss of atomic war. The Cold War arms race created and served to maintain what Winston Churchill termed ‘the balance of terror’. By the end of the 1960s, both the United States and the Soviet Union had more than enough nuclear weapons to withstand a first strike and still be able to retaliate. This article explores how mutual assured destruction (MAD) was reflected and refracted in European culture and society from 1950 to 1985, and shows how film and fiction played a key role in highlighting the potential effects of MAD – a global nuclear holocaust.

Is It Transnational? A New Perspective in the Study of Communism

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 114-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bogdan C. Iacob
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Fundamental Shift ◽  
The Continuum

This article presents a comprehensive review of the transnational perspective in the study of communism and the implications of this methodological turn for the transformation of the field itself. While advancing new topics and interpretative standpoints with a view to expanding the scope of such an initiative in current scholarship, the author argues that the transnational approach is important on several levels. First, it helps to de-localize and de-parochialize national historiographies. Second, it can provide the background to for the Europeanization of the history of the communist period in former Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Third, and most importantly, the transnational approach can reconstruct the international dimension of the communist experience, with its multiple geographies, spaces of entanglement and transfer, and clustered, cross-cultural identity-building processes. The article concludes that the advent of transnationalism in the study of communism allows for the discovery of various forms of historical contiguousness either among state socialisms or beyond the Iron Curtain. In other words, researchers might have a tool to not only know more about less, but also to resituate that “less” in the continuum of the history of communism and in the context of modernity. The transnational approach can generate a fundamental shift in our vantage point on the communist phenomenon in the twentieth century. It can reveal that a world long perceived as mostly turned inward was in fact imbricate in wider contexts of action and imagination and not particularly limited by the ideological segregationism of the Cold War.

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.

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