The Demise of Conflict Studies

Perspectives on <i>The Soviet Union and the Horn of Africa during the Cold War</i>

<i>The Balkans in the Cold War</i>. by Svetozar Rajak et al., eds., London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 372 pp. €106.99.

A diverse and valuable contribution to Cold War studies, The Form of Ideology and the Ideology of Form: Cold War, Decolonization and Third World Print Cultures features essays from a variety of international scholars of the Cold War. The contributors’ wealth of approaches is evident in the wide-ranging focus of the book, which includes chapters on Cold War print culture and literary publishing in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, with forays into cosmopolitan sites of collaboration and exile such as interwar Berlin, which, as Supriya Chaudhuri notes in her chapter, “The Traveller as Internationalist: Syed Mujtaba Ali,” was “a hub for revolutionary groups, especially from India and the Middle East, while Germany provided a haven for disaffected colonial intellectuals” (p. 48).The focus of the book is the volatile transitional period of the Cold War, when the “Third World” was just coming into existence, defining itself against the so-called First and Second Worlds and also struggling to establish a unified identity among multiple internal factions competing for control of the future of these nations. Such a protean moment offers rich territory for these scholars of print culture and Cold War literature.The question of how ideology and form intersect, and indeed whether and how political ideology can influence decisions about literary form, largely frames the book. In chapters demonstrating a multiplicity of approaches, the authors explicate genre and medium more often than formal decisions. But print culture is the focal point of these critical investigations, from decisions to favor one type of fiction over another, to the strategy of publishing magazines, literary newspapers and affordable, widely distributed paperbacks in order to promote a particular politics or worldview through literature.Paulo Lemos Horta's essay, “Euforia, Desencanto: Roberto Bolaño and Barcelona Publishing in the Transition to Democracy,” is one of the book's highlights, a bracing and necessary reappraisal of the Chilean writer and worldwide literary star who spent much of his adulthood in Spain. Horta examines Bolaño's life and work in the context of his close contacts with insurgent writers and publishers, focusing on his engagement with Spanish politics during a particularly unsettled period and arguing that these issues are reflected in his writing. The picture that emerges here of Bolaño as an outspoken, engaged writer is more subtle and subversive than many casual readers of Bolaño's popular novels may recognize.As a radical leftist, Bolaño and his writing were considered by some to be “‘militantemente minoritario,’ a phrase that captures … Bolaño as a partisan, a soldier in the defense of the literature for the few against the demands of commercial publishing” (p. 296). The transnational scope of the book is exemplified here by Horta's description of writing from Allen Ginsberg published alongside uncritical comments on the Baader Meinhof Group in a Spanish magazine, suggesting that Bolaño's reading of Ginsberg in Barcelona in 1977 had connotations very different from those most apparent to readers in the United States, the majority of whom knew relatively little about the politics of Cold War Europe.Itzea Goikolea-Amiano's “The Poetics and Politics of Solidarity: Barg el-Lil (1961) and Afrotopia” examines how the eponymous novel helped form the postcolonial consciousness in Tunisia, in part by featuring “the first enslaved black protagonist in a modern Arabic novel” (p. 267). In this informative essay Goikolea-Amiano also suggests how Barg el-Lil examined and even helped facilitate the difficult process of cultural contact between Europeans and Muslims without falling prey to nationalist and religious stereotypes.The study of the Cold War has been invigorated over the past two decades by several groundbreaking texts, specifically concerning literary transnationalism and the insidious yet often creatively generative work of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), an organization funded by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency that sponsored significant literary publications around the world during the Cold War. Francesca Orsini's “Literary Activism: Hindi Magazines, the Short Story and the World” complicates some of the scholarship on this topic, especially concerning the Third World. This is particularly clear in the way Orsini departs from work by Andrew Rubin and Elizabeth Holt, who have argued that the global simultaneity of publications by CCF-sponsored journals had a homogenizing effect on the literary and political discourse. In fact, as Orsini writes, “multiple and competing visions of world literature could be found in the same magazine at the same time—tracing different ‘significant geographies’ and belying simple geopolitical polarities” (p. 105).The competing visions of world literature that flourished during the Cold War have continued to animate the work of scholars of the period, providing numerous, often contradictory frameworks through which to read and interpret this writing. By using multiple approaches while focusing specifically on the print cultures of the Third World, this book enriches our understanding of how Cold War ideology played out in the literature of developing nations in the late twentieth century. The Form of Ideology and the Ideology of Form: Cold War, Decolonization and Third World Print Cultures encourages a decentralized, transnational approach rather than the First World narratives and points of view that have tended to dominate the critical discourse among Western scholars.

Journal Article A Turning-Point in the Cold War? Get access Arnold Toynbee Arnold Toynbee Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 26, Issue 4, October 1950, Pages 457–462, https://doi.org/10.2307/2607139 Published: 01 October 1950

<i>Degrees of Difficulty: How Women's Gymnastics Rose to Prominence and Fell from Grace</i> by Georgia Cervin

REVIEWS 779 reiterate their approach which centres on the historical periodization of opposition duringthe variousstagesof the Communist system'sdevelopment. Each period in their view -resistance to the establishmentof Communist rule, social protest and political non-conformismin the early post-totalitarian period, human rights and 'Second Society' dissidence during state socialist stagnation and the formation of politicized counter-elites during Communism 's collapse had core features as well as a mixture of common systemicand nationally differentiatedtraits.They argue that the explanatory value of social movement theory is not just restrictedto Poland's case and the collapse of Communism elsewhere.For them it can be read much further back and is relevantbloc-wide 'in the explanationof dissidenceand opposition under conditions of authoritarianrule' (p. 26I). Overall, the volume works quite well as a middle level type of study. It is moderately successfulin identifyingand delimiting the subjectin the light of the wide range of divergentbloc wide national experiences. This symposium fallsbetween many theoreticaland empiricalstoolsbut it is partiallysuccessful in attemptingto pioneer a synthesisof an importanttopic. Department ofPolitics GEORGE SANFORD University ofBristol Bisley, Nick. 7he Endof theColdWarandtheCauses of SovietCollapse. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstokeand New York, 2004. viii + 209 pp. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography.Index. ?45.00. Herrmann, Richard K. and Lebow, Richard N. (eds). Endingthe ColdWar: Interpretations, Causation, andtheStudy ofInternational Relations. New Visions in Security. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstokeand New York, 2004. viii + 248 pp. Notes. Indexes. ?5?.??. CONTRARY to what you might think from the titles of these two books, Nick Bisley'sis the one more concerned with InternationalRelations theory. Bisley attemptsto show the validity of historicalsociology in understandingthe end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet state. He extends the ideas of Michael Mann and Theda Skocpol to place particularstresson the changing nature of state power over time. As he says, most commentators were too ready to accept the statusquo during the Cold War and failed to appreciate the extent of change in the Soviet Union before its final collapsein December I99I. Bisley also makes the case for the inter-relationshipbetween the domestic and international.In particular,Bisley argues that the Cold War helped legitimize the Soviet state. The conflict with the West justified the one-party dictatorship,the militarizationof Soviet society, and the deprivationssuffered by the Soviet people. As Gorbachev introduced new political thinking in foreign policy and began to abandon the Cold War, the Soviet state was simultaneouslyde-legitimized.Thus, the decline of the Soviet Union did not lead to the end of the Cold War, as many suggest the two processeswere, in fact, too inextricablyinterlinkedfor that. The general argumentpresented here is convincing, and Nick Bisleyis rightto suggestthat commentatorshave paid too little attention to the impact of the internationalon the nature of 780 SEER, 84, 4, 2006 the Soviet state. The relative importance of the domestic and international, however, remains rather elusive in this account. Perhaps it is sufficient to acknowledge the inter-relationshipand leave it at that. Inevitably,in a book of this kind, the authoruses broad brushstrokesin his coverage of both the Soviet Union and the Cold War. On occasion, however, I felt this went a little too far. For example, in attempting to argue that the Soviet Union was a highly militarized society (with which I would not disagree ), Bisley writes that the country was at war for forty-nine out of the seventy-fouryears of its existence (p.62). But in citing the Civil War, World War II, the Cold War and Afghanistan,one was left wondering whether the US (or any other Western state, for that matter)had a record over a similar period that was much better. I also felt that his broader claims for historical sociology might have been strongerwithin a more comparative framework. Not only would the US make an interesting case study, but I was also left wondering if Communist China would support or undermine the central arguments here. In the period of detente in the I970s, China replaced the United States as Moscow's enemy number one. China allied itself with the US, and from 1978 proved that a Marxist-Leniniststate could reform itself sufficientlyto become the fastestgrowing economy in the world. Communist China survivedthe end of the Cold War well enough...

<i>The War of Nerves: Inside the Cold War Mind</i> by Martin Sixsmith

Reviewed by: The Politics of Peace: A Global Cold War History by Petra Goedde Martijn Lak The Politics of Peace: A Global Cold War History. By petra goedde. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 307 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-537083-6. $35.00 (hardcover and ebook). The historiography of the Cold War has predominantly focused on war, or the lack thereof between the two superpowers. One of the main points of focus is the in all ways absurd nuclear arms race, which resulted in the United States and the Soviet Union (SU) combined having tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. For decades, people lived in the shadow of "the bomb," fearing that even a small mistake or the action of some lunatic general might result in nuclear Armageddon, so vividly portrayed in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. However, the Cold War was also very much about preserving peace, perhaps especially in the realization that an all-out war between the United States and Soviet Union would mean the destruction of civilization. It is precisely the emerging politics of peace that is central to Petra Goedde's thought-provoking The Politics of Peace. A Global Cold War History. As stated by the author: "The history of the Cold War cannot be written without an understanding of the competing definitions of peace that existed on both sides of the Iron Curtain […] The Cold War was both more ubiquitous and less territorial than previously assumed" (p. 4). Using an impressive and very broad range of primary sources, Goedde does an excellent job in showing how the politics of peace were used by the various actors in the Cold War. At first, the United States rejected peace as a public strategy, in contrast to the SU. For Moscow, the promotion of peace was an integral part of its propaganda campaign. Washington and its European allies, on the other hand, "regularly accused activists of being communist agents or naïve idealists who had become tools of an international conspiracy […] By associating peace with communism, the Western world was left aligning its own liberal democratic capitalist system with war" (p. 13). This would only change at the beginning of the 1950s, as the Americans began to understand that dismissing peace advocacy damaged the United States' international reputation. This was articulated, for example, by W. Averell Harriman, special assistant to President Truman and former ambassador in Moscow, who stated that "it is essential for this government to recapture the peace mantle from the Russians." In the words of Goedde: "Over the course of the 1950s, Harriman's advice became US policy" (p. 23). [End Page 828] Writing in an accessible style, Goedde presents a plethora of organizations and people, both East and West, that advocated peace. She also makes very clear that "the left," traditionally associated more with peace than "the right," by no means presented a united front. There was a strong division between what Goedde refers to as the "Old Left" and the "New Left." The latter, "disillusioned with the empty rhetoric and internal contradictions of Soviet-dominated communism […] developed an alternative political agenda that championed peace, freedom from oppression, nonviolence, and participatory democracy" (p. 39). A united left proved largely illusory. Goedde also shows that there was considerable difference in the women's movement. Traditionally, war and national security were associated with masculinity and strength. Peace was seen as weak and feminine. However, "it did not follow logically that men advocated for the former while women sought the latter" (p. 131). Goedde also makes convincingly clear that women had considerable influence on the course of the Cold War, at least on lowering tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. This became clear, for example, in the Détente of the 1960s and 1970s, although it is a fact that the thaw in international relations had a number of causes: "Détente should be understood as a gradual process that unfolded over the course of the 1960s, emanating from multiple sources and shaped by a diverse set of actors" (p. 189). Chief among them were, Goedde points out convincingly, the growing peace and anti-war movements, above all in the United States...

This article analyzes the Soviet films of the "Cold War" period about Western world and Western characters – in terms of their ideology, social and cultural context. As examples from movies and detective fiction genre – "The Mystery of Two Oceans", "Amphibian Man", "The Case of Corporal Kochetkov", "Gardens of the Scorpion."

Reviewed by: Environmental Histories of the Cold War Maja Fjaestad (bio) Environmental Histories of the Cold War. Edited by J. R. McNeill and Corinna Unger. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xii+362. $90. Not only do the cold war and the development of the environmental movement coincide in time, their histories are also deeply intertwined. Technologies of mass destruction have left deep physical traces, and the postwar development of sciences such as meteorology and atmospheric science have to be discussed in a cold war context. Scientists have played key roles in both developments, as strategic planners, technocratic experts, and peace activists. These connections, and more, are addressed in the new volume Environmental Histories of the Cold War. The volume is in itself an admirable initiative, as these aspects of the cold war are often neglected. Two main themes (not necessarily connected) are addressed: the impact of the cold war on the environment, as well as how the environment was used as a weapon. At the same time, the volume sketches the history and emergence of the environmental movement, and tells a story of environmentalism as a resistance movement behind the Iron Curtain. The thirteen contributions paint a picture of the environmental devastation that resulted from the arms race of the superpowers, showing how nuclear tests spread fear and destruction in areas considered unimportant enough to sacrifice, and revealing how nations in their hubris planned to change climate, geography, and weather in their interests. Paul Josephson describes—in an essay as well written as it is appalling—the environmental devastation in the USSR, uncovering how the environment was subordinated to the needs of industry and the military time and time again. The remarkable discussions about environmental, biological, and radiological warfare in America—the possibilities as well as horrors these technologies could offer—are discussed by Jacob Darwin Hamblin. The antagonism between the Geneva Protocol and the American use of herbicides in Vietnam is analyzed in an enlightening essay by David Zierler; the final ratification of the protocol was pushed by peace activists and scientists raging against President Nixon. China’s environmental movement has a story of its own, one pressed between the international cold war situation and the country’s own socialist logics. Here, Bao Maohong retells a story about vast consequences and reactions that came only when the costs of environmental effects were all too obvious. We all know how the cold war ended, with jubilant resistance movements, fallen walls, and new economic challenges for Eastern Europe. But was the end of the cold war a turning point for the environmental movement? Frank Uekötter argues in an interesting epilogue that it was—but only as a discursive turning point, at least so far. New ambitions for environmental [End Page 233] work now could be formulated in the ideological vacuum after the cold war, “making for a turning point in aspirations and hopes rather than in humanity’s ecologic footprint” (p. 351). Although obviously outside the scope of the volume, it would be interesting to draw some parallels to the story of the rise in awareness of climate change, but lack of effective policy responses, of the early 2000s. One minor point of criticism could be that the essays vary considerably in scope; some texts are narrow and locally situated, while others aim at re-telling broad stories at a transnational level. A more coherent overall question for the essays might have better served the purpose of the ambitious and interesting introduction by Corinna Unger and J. R. McNeill. Still, the initiative as well as the accomplishment must be praised: a comprehensive volume that combines two study fields in a fruitful as well as absorbing way, thereby breaking new ground. The perspectives presented are rich and varied, and they encompass experiences from outside the Western world. In addition, the volume constitutes an important contribution to neighboring fields such as the history of energy, military history, and diplomatic history. And, not least, environmental histories such as these can teach us something about how to build a more eco-friendly world today—in war or peace. Maja Fjaestad Maja Fjaestad is an assistant professor in the Division of History of...

After the end of Second World War, the two power bloc was raising in world politics and the revelry between the blocs was on top. The Cold War politics emerged as a bitter experience of international relations. Both blocs were mollifying the other countries of the world. It had to become stronger because of many newly independent countries. For the sake their independence many countries choose the third path to avoiding war and keeping their independence, they framed NAM (Non-alignment Movement). Most of these countries was belong to Asia and Africa and also newly independent. The US (United States) and European countries criticized NAM and revoked it as a group of opportunist countries. The NAM emerged as an international platform as a third alternative of two power blocs. The NAM was the international phenomenon of developing and third world countries. Non-alignment grew out of the cold war bitter relationship between US and USSR. Some developing and third world newly independent countries refused to post Second World War world politics through the eyes of their erstwhile colonial rulers. Indian Prime Minister Nehru was one of the paramount leaders of NAM since its inception. After the demise of British rule in India, India also refused to join any bloc in Cold War time. Nehru did not want to enter in two bloc politics due to India’s national interests. He thought that Indian independence could diminish if India going toward any blocs and adopted Non-alignment as an instrument of foreign policy. He also made effort to discuss other world leader to formulate NAM as platform of collective voice of newly independence countries. The paper also aims to explain India’s contribution to the Non-alignment Movement.&#x0D; The first formal conference of NAM was in Bandung in 1961. Nehru and others NAM leaders uttered against new imperialism in Asia and Africa in Bandung Summit by the western countries. Some countries raise questions about the importance and relevance of NAM and produce it as a callous movement after the end of the Cold War. However the broader membership of NAM proved its relevance and importance. Most of the world countries adopted NAM membership due to its popularity and momentous agenda. While the Cold War strategic environment underestimates Non-alignment movement and the two power blocs tried to demoralize Non-alignment movement, however the Non-alignment movement was accomplishing their work with a greater momentum.&#x0D; Non-alignment, both as a foreign policy perspective of most newly independence states of Asia, Africa and Latin America and as well as an international movement was a critical factor of contemporary international relations. The Non-alignment movement was the collective voice of developing and third world countries since the first official meeting of its leaders in Belgrade in 1961. The policy of the Non-alignment has been being the issue of debate in international politics since its origin. In 1970’s, its importance and relevance had questioned, with the emergence of détente in international relations. The US and European countries did not consider the NAM movement at that time. Both power blocs were also questioned the role of NAM in cold war era. The western countries always tagged NAM as a collaboration of opportunist countries. It was such a big thing that NAM survived in fracas of cold war. The study tried to remove skepticism on Non-alignment and NAM in post-Cold War arena. It is also suggesting a new way for making the movement effective and relevant in present context.

The Cold War and the growth of the welfare state constitute two major frameworks for understanding politics and society in post-war Western Europe. This chapter discusses how the Cold War shaped the development of welfare states in selected Western European countries in the first decades after 1945. It is argued that two mechanisms were important. First, social policies were used for securing mass loyalty and as an anti-communist strategy in Western Europe. Second, the Cold War strongly impacted political coalition-building in Western countries.

July 01 2011 Nick McCamley. Cold War Secret Nuclear Bunkers: The Passive Defence of the Western World during the Cold War. Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen and Sword Military Classics, 2007. 281 pp. $21.99 Simon Duke Simon Duke Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Simon Duke Online ISSN: 1531-3298 Print ISSN: 1520-3972 © 2011 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology2011 Journal of Cold War Studies (2011) 13 (3): 216–218. https://doi.org/10.1162/JCWS_r_00154 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Simon Duke; Nick McCamley. Cold War Secret Nuclear Bunkers: The Passive Defence of the Western World during the Cold War. Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen and Sword Military Classics, 2007. 281 pp. $21.99. Journal of Cold War Studies 2011; 13 (3): 216–218. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/JCWS_r_00154 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsJournal of Cold War Studies Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 2011 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology2011 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

£24.50 and $40.00, £12.75 and $20.00 softback Paul Robert Magocsi Ukraine: A Historical Atlas 1986 University of Toronto Press Toronto 62

As Europe was beginning to settle down into comparative quiet after two decades of turmoil, so did new troubles flare up in many parts of Asia. Some of these problems had considerable ‘Cold War’ overtones, but many of them were difficult for either side to evaluate in simple and familiar ‘Cold War’ terms. The emerging regimes of Asia presented many problems for the formulators of policy in western countries. Traditionally the United States had favoured withdrawal of imperial control from colonial dependencies: a policy she applied in the immediate aftermath of war to her own territory, the Philippines. For such reasons British policy towards possessions in and near the Indian subcontinent was approved in Washington. The Dutch, however, took a very different view of nationalist movements in the Netherlands East Indies, which they continued to fight — against the advice of British and Americans alike — right into 1949, when at last Indonesia achieved effective independence. Already, in the late 1940s, the long, complex and exceedingly dangerous conflict in French Indo-China and its successors, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, had commenced.