Mixing Politics and Science: Lessons Learned

A forgotten book, and an intellectual path from the fascist left to European integration This paper focuses on an old and forgotten book which, even at the time of its publication (1948), garnered no special attention. The book, Questa Italia, written by Roberto Ducci, who was to become one of the most important Italian diplomats of the first thirty years of the Republic, offered an initial, brief reconstruction of the historical parabola of fascism. Ducci proposed an original interpretation of the historical role that fascism had played in the first half of the twentieth century. He featured one of the earliest portrayals of Italian fascism as a «mass regime», and believed that fascism had been a manifestation of the historical transition from liberal to new forms of «state economy»: a still ongoing transition in the post-war decades, of which the Beveridge Report and the 1945 Labour government constituted the most significant variations on the democratic side. Thanks to the analysis and interpretation of the previous thirty years, Ducci drew conclusions about the future: the decay of the Nation State and the need to respond to its crisis by promoting the integration of spaces and the creation of new centres of supranational authority, in the perspective of a «world government» or at least of the United States of Europe. Through an analytical approach, the paper reconstructs the contents of the book, by relating it to the author�s own intellectual itinerary, in which he had served as a young man in the fascism�s left wing and eventually became a fervent supporter of European integration.

Guest Editors’ Introduction

The study of Zeitgeschichte, or contemporary history, was not an invention of the postwar era. But it was in the wake of the Second World War that it carved out a space in the historical professions of the United States, Great Britain and, most pronouncedly, West Germany. In each country, it came with similar definitions: in West Germany as “the era of those living, and its scholarly treatment by academics”; in the United States as “the period of the last generation or two”; and in Britain as “Europe in the twentieth century” or “the histories of yesterday which are being written today.” Such definitions contained a generational component and left contemporary history open to continuous rejuvenation. Yet during the postwar decades, the above definitions steered interest clearly toward the history of National Socialism, the Second World War, and foreign policy of the 1920s and 1930s. The horrific cost in human lives of Nazi racial and anti-Semitic policies gave an instant relevance to all aspects of Germany's past. The German grip on much of Europe had made National Socialism an integral component in the history of formerly occupied countries, and the Allied struggle to defeat Nazism added yet more countries to the list of those that had seen their histories become entangled with that of Germany. Hence, the academic writing of German contemporary history was never an exclusively German affair. Scholars outside Germany, especially in Great Britain and the United States, were part of the endeavor from the outset. Their involvement was facilitated by the fact that the Western Allies had captured an enormous quantity of German records and archives at the end of the war, part of which would become available to historians over the course of the 1950s and 1960s.

Church History from the International Periphery: The South American Perspective

It would not be an underestimation to say that until the victory of the Sandinista revolution in July 1979, Central America was the most neglected region in Latin America in Soviet foreign policy formulation. Even the victory of Castro’s revolution did not much alter the Soviet perception of the area. Two major factors had placed limitations on Soviet interests and activities in Central America. Firstly, its close proximity to the United States, and thus its presence within the American geopolitical sphere of influence. The Soviet analysts and policy-makers were apprehensive of the Monroe Doctrine (proclaimed by Washington in 1823), which has been applied successfully in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries in the Western hemisphere, comprising Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, where American security interests are exposed most.

<i>Cultural Capital</i>: Reflections from a Latin Americanist

After the Second World War, a bipolar world, known as the Cold War Era, has been clearly formed between the Western Bloc and Communist Bloc while the United States and the Soviet Union at the peak on each side. In Eastern Europe, the United States was restrained and felt helpless about Soviet expansion in this area with the perception of Yalta system. On the other hand, in Asia, with the breakdown of talks, an all-out war resumed. A Chinese civil war fought between Kuomintang (also as KMT or Chinese National Party) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP). At the end of 1948, KMT has occupied the inferior position. In the early period of 1949, CCP forces crossed the Yangtze River and successfully captured Nanking, the capital of KMT’s Republic of China (PRC) government. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China (PRC) with its capital at Beiping, which was renamed Beijing. Chiang Kai-shek and millions of Nationalist Chinese retreated from mainland China to the island of Taiwan. Confronted with the CCP takeover of mainland China, the United States came to reformulate its China Policy which later marked a turning point in Sino-American relationship during the period of 1949 to the middle 1950. In June 1948, the leader of Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, was officially denounced and his party, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY), was ejected as a member of the Cominform by the Soviet Union. Since the West branded Tito a Soviet puppet for his loyalty and constancy of faith to Stalinism, the Tito-Stalin Split presented a whole new realm of possibilities to the United States for its dilemma in china—“Chinese Titoism.” With the influence of Stilwell Incident over Sino-American relationship and the facts of Tito-Stalin Split, Truman made an about-face change to U.S. China Policy in 1949. By the early 1949, the Truman Administration has already been making plans to diverge from Chiang and his KMT such as the publication of China White Paper; at the same time, Truman Administration keeping making chances to have conversations with the CCP. By meeting and negotiating with the CCP officials, Truman Administration attempted to disunite Communist China and the Soviet Union, expected Mao to be the “Asian Tito,” and then Communist China can joint forces with the United States to fight against the Soviet Union, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. Until the outbreak of Korean War in June 1950, the United States finally realized that what it faced is hostile china along with the Sino-Soviet partnership. By applying Graham T. Allison’s three decision-making models, namely, the Rational Actor Model (RAM), the Organizational Behavior Model (OBM), and the Governmental Politics Model (GPM) as the theoretical structure and basis, the thesis would step by step explore the decision-making process of Truman Administration in engaging China to counter the threat from the Soviet Union during the period of 1949 to the middle 1950 through the perspectives of the rational assessment and choice on national interest, struggles between/among organizations based on different target and organizational culture, and pulling, hauling and bargaining games among relative bureaucrats. In addition, the thesis also applied the principles from Alexander L. George’s book, Presidential Decision-making in Foreign Policy, to aim at examining how President Truman’s, who has the final say, character, personality, value and world views made effect in the decision-making process of the target case study. In the process of theory confirming, the thesis discovered that by the period of transformation of Chinese regimes in 1949, the Tito-Stalin Split of 1948 presented the United States a new inspiration for the Communist World, that is, the Eastern Bloc is not a rigid “Iron Curtain.” Truman Administration considered that Titoism may set its roots upon China, the Yugoslav-Soviet Conflict could be a replay situation that occurred in mainland China, and both would put the strategic thought—Engaging China to counter the Soviet Threat—into practice. Nevertheless, from the historical perspectives, this kind of strategic thought seemed over-optimistic, which did not conform to fully rational considerations. However, with regard to the background of the early Cold War Era and the suspicion between the Truman Administration and KMT, the alternative that the United States took reflected the principles of “bounded rationality model.” As a result, by examining the decision-making process of Truman Administration in engaging China to counter the threat from the Soviet Union during the period of 1949 to the middle 1950, what the thesis explored not only the facts about the Sino-American relationship in this period, but also the continuity and change of Truman’s China Policy along with its cause and effect.

The article is devoted to the problem of representing the image of the "West" in the periodical press of the Soviet Union in the second half of the 1950s and 1960s through coverage of the issue of disarmament, which is one of the aspects of studying the international relations of the Soviet Union. During the period under review, it was the press that played a leading role in shaping a positive or negative image of foreign countries. The article attempts to analyze the transformation of the image of the “West” on the pages of the central periodicals of the Soviet Union. This period is presented in the Soviet press as a turning point in relations with Western countries. The amount of material devoted to disarmament is increasing. Unlike in the post-war decade, the main opponent of disarmament is Germany, not the United States. Also, Soviet propaganda increasingly divided the society of Western countries, separating the government and claiming the growth of supporters of the policy of the Soviet Union. The materials of the central periodical press of the Soviet Union led to the conclusion that in the second half of the 1950s, Western countries, led by the United States, continued to be presented as enemies on the pages of “Pravda” and "Izvestia." Despite this, the image of the enemy directly depended on the international situation and interstate relations and therefore underwent a certain transformation. The attitude towards Western countries has become more loyal in comparison with the post-war decade, and there have been fewer negative assessments.

Teaching &amp; Learning Guide for: Literature, Social Science, and the Development of American Migration Narratives in the Twentieth Century

This paper examines the development of plant-breeding science in the context of the booming genetic research and autarky policy of the 1930s as well as during World War II in National Socialist-occupied Europe. Soviet scientists, especially Nikolai Vavilov and his VIR institute, had a leading position in the international plant-breeding science of the 1920s. During World War II, German scientists, namely experts from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Plant Breeding, usurped Soviet institutes and valuable seed collections. In contrast, plant-breeding research in occupied Scandinavia continued with relatively little disturbance. The paper compares behavior of German, Soviet, and Norwegian plant-breeding scientists under the Nazi regime.

By 1954, the United States was gripped by the fear of the ever-expanding Communist tide. The expansion of Soviet Russia into Eastern Europe, the fall of China to the reds, and the war over the Korean peninsula had all shaken America’s nerves. As the only non-Communist super-power, the United States felt that it was its duty to first halt the spread of Communism and then push it back and replace it with democracies. Any government that had even the slightest hint of Communism must be removed for the safety of the United States and democracy. The United States State Department and CIA became obsessed with rooting out Communism and Communists, and Guatemala became caught in the CIA's crosshairs. This obsession lead to a lack of perspective and inability to see the other side’s point of view that caused the CIA, the United States State Department, and the Eisenhower administration to cause the downfall of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman and end the October Revolution of 1944. Both sides were guilty of tunnel vision. All the CIA could see was red Communists quickly taking over the government of Guatemala and creating a beachhead for Moscow and the USSR to infiltrate the North American continent and the United States’ sphere of influence. While the people of the United States and their government may or may not have had justification for this fear, the real tragedy was their inability to see and understand why and what the reality was on the ground in Guatemala. Arbenz and his foreign minister were just as guilty in bringing about their demise. Arbenz and Toriello’s inability to understand the United States’ fear of Communism, and their own obsession with United Fruit Company contributed in a significant way to the end of their administration. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Reclaiming the Revolutionary

A Digital History of Anglophone Demography and Global Population Control, 1915–1984

This article chronicles the correspondence between Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975) and his colleagues in the USSR in the years following his arrival in the United States on what was to have been a one-year fellowship working in the laboratory of T.H. Morgan at Columbia University. These letters chronicle a period during which Dobzhansky not only realized the enormous potential of Drosophila genetics for unlocking the secrets of evolution, but also that con­tinuing this research would require finding a way to remain in the United States longer than either the Soviet Academy of Sciences, or the Rockefeller Foundation, would allow. Dobzhansky’s exchanges during this period with mentors such as Yuri Filipchenko and Nikolai Vavilov, as well as fellow students and colleagues such as Nikolai Medvedev, highlight the precarious game Dobzhansky played as he attempted to appear eager to return to his homeland, while secretly maneuvering to delay it. By the time it was over Filipchenko would die an early death of meningitis and Vavilov—who had originally been urging Dobzhansky to return and contribute to development of genetics in Russia—would now advise him to remain in the USA. Dobzhansky was nearly forced to return to the USSR after a routine trip to Canada to renew his visa, an outcome that would surely have resulted in imprisonment or worse. In the end he was allowed to stay, however Dobzhansky’s defection was so resented by the Soviet regime that even decades later he would remain an “un-person” in his homeland, whose name and contributions were never officially acknowledged during his lifetime, and his attempts at reconciliation were rejected.

Richard G. Olson. <i>Scientism and Technocracy in the Twentieth Century: The Legacy of Scientific Management</i>. xx + 207 pp., bibl., index. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2016. $85 (cloth).