Cold War Research Articles

The power(s) of Bridge of Spies to learn about the Cold War

PurposeIn this article, we use the film Bridge of Spies – which depicts the case of U-2 spy pilot Francis Gary Powers – and relevant primary sources, particularly Powers' letters from prison, to provide teachers with a case that can engage students with the complexity of the Cold War. Understanding USA–Russia relations is as important today as ever as we watch the tragedy unfold in Ukraine. Using primary sources to reflect on the Cold War can help secondary students understand the historical context of the war in Ukraine as well as how to evaluate and critique sources of information about the war.Design/methodology/approachThe film and personal letters provide insights often not available or obvious when we focus on the political or military history of an event or time period. The Cold War is frequently defined by the rhetoric of the USA and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) governments – but everyday people and citizens had a wider range of views and experiences. The film and letters bring out the humanity of the Cold War.FindingsThis article supports secondary teachers in incorporating film and primary sources as teaching tools to study the Cold War while more broadly thinking about these sources as ways to understand the past. The letters used, including those from U-2 spy pilot Francis Gary Powers, help us understand his time in a Soviet prison as well as the behind-the-scenes work to free him as part of a prisoner exchange.Originality/valueThe U-2 Incident and other events of the Cold War provide important context for understanding the Cold War-like tensions between the USA and Russia today. The distrust between these countries has a long history. However, documents like the film and letters discussed here show that there is much more to the bluster of political leaders and the military chess game. There is an important human element to these events and an impact on individuals who are much more than pawns in international diplomacy.

Introduction to Everyday Internationalism: Socialist–South Connections and Mass Culture during the Cold War

Abstract This Special Issue brings together scholars working in a variety of contexts to explore the concepts of solidarity and socialist internationalism as a mass phenomenon. While recent scholarship has begun to document linkages between the socialist and (post)colonial world during the Cold War, most of this work has eschewed a focus on the mass, social experience of internationalism, instead emphasizing the transformative role played by small groups of mobile elites. But if the direct experience of socialist internationalism was limited to a privileged few, how then was it experienced by the majority, for whom actual travel outside of their state was a distant possibility? This issue explores how socialist internationalism and its attendant practices of solidarity functioned within and between socialist societies. Where it does take border-transcending groups as its subject, it explores the socio-historical, everyday implications of this transnational story. For much of the Cold War, state and party-led practices of internationalism were a central component of everyday life, but little is known about these practices as they manifested on the ground. To shed light on this, this Special Issue explores how depictions of solidarity manifested in mass culture; how everyday practices emerged out of socialist internationalism and anti-imperialism; and how institutions that sought to bridge gaps between societies through solidarity emerged and then transformed or disappeared after 1989.

An Appeal for International Solidarity in a Time of the Cold War: Retracing Indonesia’s Participation in the 1966 Tricontinental Conference

Abstract In January 1966, Cuban President Fidel Castro announced at the Tricontinental Conference the killing of more than 100,000 people in Indonesia and the destruction of the left movement in that country. The 1965–66 massacre of members and sympathisers of the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, pki) in Indonesia ushered in the authoritarian New Order regime under General Suharto, marking a realignment in Cold War politics. This article examines the battle to represent Indonesia by two competing delegations at the Tricontinental Conference and the materials left behind as traces of Cold War era social movements and tricontinentalism. The aim of the article is twofold. Drawing on archival research, oral history interviews, ego-documents, and ethnographic observations, the article consists of a partial reconstruction of the Indonesian intervention at the Tricontinental Conference, arguably the last public, international intervention by Indonesian leftists. The second part of the article examines the archives, broadly defined, used in the reconstruction and the research process itself, given the contested nature of these memories. In so doing, the article illustrates how the end of the Cold War, the rise of new media and technologies, and democratisation in Indonesia have contributed to the transmission of memories of this past to audiences in and outside of Indonesia.

Reframing Revolution and Solidarity: Photography and Visual Culture in ospaaal Poster Art (1967–1990)

Abstract This article analyses the uses of photography in the posters produced and distributed by the Organisation of solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America (ospaaal) between 1967 and 1990. Founded during the Tricontinental Conference of 1966, ospaaal was active until 2019 and had as one of its main tasks the creation of propaganda materials helping promote causes supported by the Cuban government across the three continents. The organisation produced over 300 posters distributed globally along with its official magazine, the Tricontinental. We combine thematic and visual perspectives in examining how ospaaal posters published during the Cold War period made use of photography. Our goal is to understand how ospaaal contributed to a reframing of ‘solidarity’ and ‘revolution’ through tricontinental lenses. The article is structured to provide an overview of how the organisation utilised photography in its poster production, to demonstrate how this body of work is connected to inter-war photographic traditions and contemporary left-wing visual culture, and to reflect on ospaaal’s contributions to revolutionary iconography.

Introducing Remembrances of Tricontinental Pasts: Narratives and Artefacts of Global Cold War Social Movements

Introducing Remembrances of Tricontinental Pasts: Narratives and Artefacts of Global Cold War Social Movements

The War on the North American Left-Wing Labor Movement From World War I Through the Post-World War II Period

Repression of the North American trade union movement dates to the late nineteenth century. Much of this repression has occurred in response to union militancy during strikes, some of which were directed against political radicals of various orientations. Peaks of repression against radical trade unionism occurred during World War I and in the immediate postwar years as well as in the early Cold War period, after World War II’s conclusion into the early 1950s. Through the analysis of three recently published volumes, I argue that the repression of North American left-wing unions was intentionally severe because of the strength of these labor organizations and the threat they were perceived to pose to employers and the government. Given that these left-wing unions were much more militant than the American Federation of Labor unions, this governmental repression (as well as that of other forces) can be viewed as a conscious set of tactics invoked that were meant to break, or at a minimum tame, these radical unions in the service of capital. Such behavior also acted as a warning to nonradical unions that repression could be directed against them as well.

The Global Institutionalization of Human Rights Discourse: A Cross-national Analysis of the Language used in the International Labour Conference during the Cold War

ABSTRACT Although human rights discourse has become a central element of international political rhetoric, the process through which it came to reach its contemporary importance is disputed. In this article, that process is examined by conducting a cross-national analysis of the language used at sessions of the International Labour Conference during the Cold War. Although the mainstream understanding is that human rights discourse diffused ‘from the West to the rest’, here it is argued that the global proliferation of human rights discourse can best be explained by the existence of world culture in which actors engage in ‘epistemic governance’. In other words, to advance their own aspirations actors try to shape the way in which others perceive reality by utilizing well-respected values in their argumentation. The values invoked become increasingly institutionalized and thus more useful for epistemic governance, leading to a synchronization of those discourses in international politics. Although actors from different ideological, cultural, and political backgrounds have emphasized different rights and topics when invoking human rights, these invocations almost exclusively drew from the same globally shared understanding of human rights’ importance and essence.

Oil or geopolitical issues? : Quantitative rethinking of political instability in the Middle East and North Africa

The Middle East and North Africa are one of the most conflict-prone regions. Due to its geopolitical position and oil production, the Middle East has always been the trump card in the game, both before World War II and during the Cold War, still today. Why do wars persist in the Middle East? Why has the situation in the Middle East deteriorated to this extent? Is rentier economics always a vital variable explaining political instability in the Middle East? After empirically analyzing the causes of political instability in the Middle East using various data, the study suggests that the experience of being a colony of Britain, France, and Italy hurt society and that the critical geographic location between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War suffered various harmful effects. On the other hand, the result also shows that manufacturing weakness due to the oil economy, high unemployment rates, and lack of democracy are all critical explanatory variables for political instability. Since the 2000s, the United States has increased its energy self-sufficiency rate through the shale oil and gas revolution. The Middle East is an option for the United States to buy oil. On the other hand, the Middle East is essential for the United States to export weapons. The Middle East has faced a geopolitical crisis in recent years due to these factors.

Feeding Refugees, Saving Souls, and Planting Churches: Lutheran Ministry in 1950s Hong Kong

Abstract The recent interest in the social history of the Cold War has given rise to many narratives of expulsions and migrations in world Christianity. This article focuses on the transformation of several Lutheran missions from sojourning in the wilderness of China’s maritime frontiers into becoming vital pastoral and welfare service providers in British Hong Kong. While licking their wounds after their reluctant exodus to Hong Kong following the Chinese Communist Revolution (1949), the Lutherans employed the triple mission of feeding refugees, saving souls, and planting churches, clinics, and schools to help the distressed population. They mobilized their global and local church networks to secure financial, medical and human resources for crisis management—resources that the British colonial government lacked. Its multilayered operation of relief programs exhibited the organizational capacity of Lutherans to assist stricken communities in Cold War Hong Kong.

Francis and the Bomb: On the Immorality of Nuclear Deterrence

ABSTRACT This essay investigates the change in the Catholic attitude toward nuclear weapons as articulated by Pope Francis. Francis has generally followed the position of his immediate predecessors with regard to the Catholic teaching on just war. While the resort to armed force remains a morally justifiable option if the principles of just war have been met, the pope forcefully emphasises the tools of nonviolent peacebuilding. Recently, however, Francis made an original just war argument when he broke with the Church’s established position on nuclear weapons. The pope declared both the use and possession of nuclear weapons “immoral” and, thus, abandoned the Church’s reluctant acceptance of nuclear deterrence that had survived the end of the Cold War. In this essay, I analyse the rationale behind Francis’s decision to break with nuclear deterrence, which is mainly grounded in the disillusionment about the failed promise of nuclear disarmament. Furthermore, I assess the impact of the new position with regard to Catholic soldiers serving in nuclear armed militaries.

Elections, Type of Regime and Risks of Revolutionary Destabilization

Abstract This analysis finds that the impact of elections on risks of armed insurrections is not statistically significant, whereas unarmed uprisings/nonviolent revolutions are more likely to occur in the election year. It is also shown that the influence of elections on unarmed revolutionary destabilization had tended to grow with time. The election year became a significant factor of nonviolent revolutionary destabilization only after the end of the Cold War, and the impact of elections on the probability of unarmed revolutions has become particularly strong in this century (when elections in the given year increase the probability of an unarmed uprising more than three times). At the same time, holding elections primarily increases the risks of revolutionary destabilization in intermediate regimes (anocracies). But even among anocracies, open anocracies/partial democracies stand out, as here elections increase the probability of unarmed uprisings in an especially dramatic way.

Freedom of speech in universities: between competence and geopolitics

Academic freedoms, including freedom of speech, were one of the fundamental pillars of the university system. They allowed the European medieval society to consolidate and form nation-states. But in their competition, freedom of speech was seen by the authorities as an obstacle to achieving world leadership. With the end of the Cold War, the perception of freedom of speech changed, on the one hand enhancing the freedom of movement of students, but on the other hand limiting it to a utilitarian approach to learning.

Cold War Elements: a Discussion on the Influence of the Cold War on the Communist Party of Malaya from 1948 to 1989

Abstract The Communist Party of Malaya (cpm) evolved under the impact of the Cold War. Considering that the cpm was a left-wing political party that had a significant impact on many areas of Malaysia, this study tries to identify and investigate the causes of the cpm’s inability to win the political fight from 1948 to 1989. Both domestic and internal party issues, along with the Cold War scenario, were a significant component that could not be neglected by the researchers.

Useful Bodies, Socialist Commodification and Everyday Culture: Promoting Albanian and Yugoslav Industrial Production Through Non-Fiction Films

In this paper, we discuss how documentaries were used for the promotion of industrial production in socialist Albania and Yugoslavia through a discussion of two short non-fiction films, Në turnet e natës/The Night Shift (1970, Albania) and 25 Godina. Jugoplastika/25th Anniversary of Jugoplastika (1977, Yugoslavia). The discourse of Albanian and Yugoslavian socialist ideologies of modernisation and industrial production, and the notion of everyday socialism are constructed and visible in the films’ representational strategies. The analysis of the two previously overlooked archival films along with the press, and non-film materials and documents from film and state archives allow us to compare and contrast the similarities and differences of Albanian and Yugoslav socialist ideologies toward industrial production, labour and gender relations. In doing so, we aim to better understand the complexities of the state socialist discourse vis-à-vis Western capitalism and consumerist ethics during the Cold War period.

Paradigmatic stability, ideational robustness, and policy persistence: exploring the impact of policy ideas on policy-making

Abstract In the policy world, the idea of ideational robustness deals with why and how policy elements can be maintained over time and the implications this has for government strategy and activity. Past approaches to ideas and their influence on public policy stressed the disparate roles of multiple policy mechanisms such as path dependency or the nature of policy networks in either driving policy change forward or ensuring persistence of a policy. Ideational robustness on the other hand allows for the possibility of some changes occurring in policy environments and components while motivating cognitive and normative policy ideas are adapted and retained. While ideational persistence has often been identified as a source of policy stability, the possibility that some ideas allow lesser or greater levels of change in policy components while basic policy content remains more or less intact (ideational robustness) is much less well understood. The article reviews the literature on policy change and stability which highlights the influence of different policy processes on overall policy dynamics and the role played by policy learning in promoting ideational robustness. Using evidence from military doctrines and procurement in Canada and Australia, the study finds that the two countries drew different defence policy lessons from the end of the Cold War which contributed heavily to the extent of robustness of their defence policy ideas. The case studies show that ideational robustness is important but also that its study must be combined with that of other policy mechanisms and processes in order to explain overall policy change patterns.

The Council of Europe, Russia, and the future of European cooperation: any lessons to be learned from the past?

The Council of Europe (CoE) was among the first Western institutions to open its doors to Russia after the end of the Cold War. However, during Russia’s membership (1996–2022) hopes of socializing the country into the CoE’s standards, norms, and principles in the areas of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law never materialized. While the CoE’s norms and principles nowadays need to be secured from Russia, there might be a point in the (distant) future where Russia should be reintegrated into European structures, with the CoE then again being a likely forum to that end. Against this background, this paper analyses the CoE’s interaction with Russia from the mid-1990s until today, focusing on the accession period as well as the organization’s subsequent monitoring activities and (non-)use of sanctions during Russia’s membership. It concludes with lessons that could guide future interactions between the CoE and Russia.

Shifting Trends in Regionalism

Regionalism is a movement that emerged after World War II. It involves countries that are geographically close and interdependent, collaborating with the help of governments and NGOs to achieve mutual benefits in a particular area of shared interest. Such regional clusters have evolved due to geographical proximity, economic interdependence, security issues, social and cultural background, and more. The end of the Cold War led to the rise of new regionalism shaped by factors such as globalization, the emergence of new players, shifts in global power dynamics, increased interdependence, alterations in security paradigms, the advent of multipolar, and various other influences. This shifting pattern has had a major impact on world politics and power dynamics. Traditional notions of security are evolving to encompass human security concerns, while economic collaboration and identity-based regionalism are gaining prominence. Asia's growing economic clout, new regional players' arrival, and smaller states' growing role are reshaping the global power landscape. Asymmetric positions and chequered history hinder the functioning of regionalism. In this context, the article seeks to analyze the changing dynamics of regionalism, the primary drivers of this shift, and its implications for global power dynamics. The article is presented from the perspectives of neo-realism, neo-liberalism, and constructivism in a descriptive, analytical, and exploratory format, where the necessary information is obtained from secondary qualitative data. 

Summit Diplomacy: US-Soviet Mountaineering Exchanges, 1974–1989

Mountaineers played an unlikely role in facilitating diplomatic relations and cultural exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. From 1974 to 1989, American and Soviet climbers engaged in a series of mountaineering exchanges in the US and USSR. Scholars have examined how sport, particularly the Olympic Games, was utilized as a means of soft power during this era. However, mountaineering provides a unique and different opportunity for exploring cultural exchange and subversive trade. During these exchanges, climbers from both sides of the Iron Curtain became entangled in a network of bartering and person-to-person diplomacy, bringing Soviets and Americans together to conquer both stereotypes and summits. The success of the exchange programmes exposed American climbers to new forms of alpine knowledge and equipment and fostered new friendships and climbing partnerships. Amidst the various cultural exchange initiatives throughout the Cold War, mountaineers effectively transformed mountain ranges into arenas of diplomacy and exchange. Thus, mountaineering offered an avenue for people to relate to one another through recreation and nature, bringing alpine encounters into the dismantling of Cold War animosity.

A narrativa de Hemingway na Espanha da Guerra Civil e suas implicações históricas e políticas a partir da teoria de Edward Said

This article consists in an historical analysis of three works by Ernest Hemingway that are set in the Spanish Civil War. The analysis is complemented by Edward Said’s theory called Orientalism to extract the narrative that the author proposes to be contrasted with the historical events to see how it is that the narrative that sought to unite the United States with the USSR to go together against fascism contributed to the illusion in which republican and democratic Spain of has being seen as a satellite state of the Soviet Union and, therefore, an enemy of the United States in the framework of the recently begun Cold War.

A Cold War legacy of student politics and anti-communism: the contingency of Poland’s illiberal turn

ABSTRACT This article offers a historical reflection on the roots of the populist-driven “illiberal turn” in Poland. Acknowledging the backsliding of recent years as the result of political contingency and the agency of a critical mass of disruptive political actors on the Right, the article argues that the “illiberal turn” was precipitated by the interplay of three historical factors, such as dynamics of Cold War era student politics, the demise of communism in 1989 with its echoes in the subsequent decades, and the implosion of the strong post-communist Centre-Left in the mid-2000s. These processes have ensured that Poland’s political trajectory has been more sui generis than understood through the general prism of the rise of populism and that it is more the result of an entrenched political class whose worldviews have been forged by the anticommunism of the 1980s and its legacy.