Cold War Archives - Page 7 of 8

Year Zero: How Communism and the Cold War Deformed Cambodia

by Kacey Manlove

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Primary and secondary sources
Images, primary and secondary sources

The flag of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (left). Notice the close resemblance to the USSR flag (right).

Political cartoon shows a US Soldier leaning against a domino that says "Bangladesh" on the other side a Vietcong soldier pushes over a domino that says "Vietnam"

The Domino Theory in South East Asia. (Photo courtesy of Kacey Manlove)

Marxist experiments were conducted in countless countries during the course of the twentieth century, and Cambodia was no exception. Kacey Manlove chronicles Cambodia’s transformation from a neutral country during the Vietnam War to a totalitarian state led by Pol Pot’s brutal Khmer Rouge communist party in the years after American defeat in South Vietnam. She shows how the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s looked to Mao’s China and Stalin’s Russia in search of social, political, and economic models to implement on Cambodian soil, and how the United States played an active role in defending and protecting Pol Pot’s regime despite its visibily brutal nature.

Khmer Rouge forces marching into Phnom Pen on April 17, 1975 under Pol Pot’s leadership. (Image courtesy of Kacey Manlove)

A Cambodian labor camp. (Image courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons)

Child soldiers in Pol Pot’s army. (Image courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons)

Contemporary image of a Khmer Rouge shooting field. (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Two men look on at museum photos of Khmer Rouge victims

Museum visitors view photos of Khmer Rouge victims. (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Street art of sickle and hammer, text reads POL POT!

(Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Individual Historical Paper (Junior Division)

Teachers: Suzanne Ransleben & Jessica Janota

Debating Bolshevism

by Andrew Straw

Communism acquired many different faces during the twentieth century. In the Soviet Union, it became known as Bolshevism. Named after the political party, led by Vladimir I. Lenin, that defeated the rival Menshevik Party in the October Revolution in 1917, Bolshevism would become the official political dogma of the Soviet Union for decades to come. The domestic response to Lenin’s revolutionary doctrine has inspired nearly a century’s worth of historical literature. Yet one question remains: how did other countries worldwide understand and react to what seemed like a particularly Soviet brand of communism?

Poster shows a Bolshevik leaning on a map of Europe and setting fire to Bavaria. The text below says: “The Bolshevik is coming! Throw him out on Election Day! Bavarian People’s Party.” (Courtesy of The Library of Congress)

Andrew Straw, a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin, created “Debating Bolshevism” to answer this very question. While even Stalin questioned the relevance of the term in as late as 1952, one glance at primary and secondary literature from across the globe during the twentieth century demonstrate that while the term may seem obsolete now, understanding what Bolshevism meant, how it was used, and why people had such strong reactions to it is crucial to understanding twentieth century history. The fact that the Soviet Union was the only official Bolshevik state in no way confined the idea of Bolshevism to the USSR. After all, Bolshevism’s own origins came from a transnational dissident group in European exile, one in which Lenin himself claimed membership. After the Bolshevik Revolution, Bolshevism entered into an ideological debate taking place on a world stage. Supporters presented it as an alternative to Western goals and principles of the West. Debating Bolshevism demonstrates that the international community from all points of the political spectrum took it seriously: its detractors maligned its violent excesses, and its supporters exalted its unhinging of imperial powers and rapid change.

Lenin leads the October Revolution wearing a proletarian workers’ cap on the front page of a 22 January 2009 issue of Pravda. The front-page article is etitled “On the Crisis,” referring to the recent spread of “Occupy Wall Street” protests in cities around the world. The accompanying text states that unemployed workers in Putin’s Russian (unemployment had reach nearly 20% in some areas) are ripe for communist revolution and calls on all concerned to attend a communist rally that was held on January 31 in Moscow.

Further down the page, a picture of pre-revolutionary Russian workers stands side by side with an image of currently unemployed Muscovites to underline the point. In addition, the newspaper includes a flyer for the demonstration that prominently displays the clenched fists of workers.

Mao Zedong was one of the prominent leaders of the 20^thcentury, and the road leading to his successful consolidation of power in the People’s Republic of China was heavily informed by the Bolshevik idea of a radically revolutionary break and guerilla warfare tactics. Mao was a firm believer that a potential revolutionary situation exists in any country where the government consistently fails in its obligation to ensure at least a minimally decent standard of living. While guerilla warfare certainly existed before Bolshevism, Mao was inspired by Bolshevik anti-imperialism, revolutionary self-determination of colonized populations, and civilian participation. Mao’s literature on military strategy drew heavily from Lenin’s On Guerilla Warfare, citing both Lenin’s political ideas and military tactics and sharing the belief that a “people’s” revolution was inevitable. Furthermore, even Western military men viewed Lenin as key to the Marxist revolutionary trends because they thought, “only when Lenin came on the scene did guerilla warfare receive the potent political injection that was to alter its character radically.

But despite the influence, Mao did not adhere to Moscow demands calling for a proletarian revolution, but instead he believed China’s revolutionary potential was housed entirely in the peasantry. Mao “knew and trusted the peasants, and had correctly gauged their revolutionary potential.” At least at this seemed to by the case to Samuel B. Griffith wrote the 1961 introduction to his translation of Mao’s on Guerilla warfare. While Mao’s Cultural Revolution and collectivization would later bring cause take a huge toll on the countryside, his initial use of peasants contrasted with the distrust and disdain Lenin and especially Stalin had for the Russian peasantry. Mao’s view was a such source of dissension between him and the Kremlin that Moscow even sanctioned the attempt by Zhou Enlai and a group known as the “28 Bolsheviks” who tried to replace Mao in 1934. These tensions would remain and only grow into the Sino-Soviet split during the Cold War.

Visit Andrew Straw’s graduate student homepage.

University of Texas at Austin – History Department

(Professor: Jeremi Suri)

Photo credits:

Zhou Zhenbiao, “Marx’s – The Glory of Mao’s Ideologies Brightens Up the New China,” Peking, 1952

People Fine Arts via The Library of Congress

The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government by David K. Johnson (2006)

by Joseph Parrott

In 1958 Frank Kameny was out of a job. A Harvard trained astronomer and veteran of World War II, he had been working for the Army Map Service. In the wake of the Russian launch of Sputnik in October of 1957, the American government was rushing to catch up, and the young scientist seemed poised to play a role in the new emphasis on space exploration. Yet within just a few months, Kameny’s career was over because he was a homosexual. His story was not unique. He was one of many victims of the Lavender Scare – a manifestation of Cold War paranoia and social bigotry that led to the dismissal of hundreds and possibly thousands of gays and lesbians from government jobs.

Historian David K. Johnson sheds light on this forgotten episode in American history. The Lavender Scare grew from the McCarthy persecutions of the 1950s, but Johnson argues that its policies lasted far longer and became more institutionalized than the anti-communist hysteria. The government dismissed homosexuals on the grounds that emotional weakness and the likelihood of blackmail made them security risks. No evidence supported these accusations and medical experts challenged the idea that homosexuals were in any way different from the majority of employees, but to little avail. Executive departments hurried to dismiss employees suspected of homosexuality, lest ambitious congressmen – already suspicious of the expansion of bureaucratic policymaking – target them for public scrutiny. In the midst of the Cold War, fear, politics, and prejudice combined “to conflate homosexuals and communists.”

The Lavender Scare offers an arresting political narrative, but Johnson also makes sure to present the very human face of this drama. Johnson utilizes extensive interviews to demonstrate the way the purges changed the lives of victims and the social milieu of Washington D.C. itself. The rapid growth of the federal government during the Depression and its relatively egalitarian hiring practices attracted large numbers of young people seeking employment, including many homosexuals hoping to escape the limitations of small town life. By 1945, Washington was, in the words of one resident, “a very gay city,” where vibrant communities thrived and authorities tolerated homosexual activity. In an effortless combination of social and political history, the author shows how the rise of the national security state transformed gay Washington, forcing many to leave and others to endure years of joblessness.

Persecution also inspired a nascent movement in defense of gay lifestyles. Activists like Frank Kameny recast the discrimination against homosexuals as an issue of civil rights. The Mattachine Society of Washington organized picketing and supported challenges to government dismissals, consciously combining “political activism with service to and affirmation of the gay subculture.” Johnson explores how these vocal demands led the government to reevaluate its policies and the connection between the private and public lives of its employees. These early manifestations of homosexual activism not only helped end decades of vocational persecution, but they also informed the networks and tactics that would come to define a movement.

In light of Frank Kameny’s death last October at the age of 86, it is appropriate to look back at the origins of the LGBT activism. The recent repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy demonstrates that cause of homosexual equality has made great strides, specifically in regard to government service. But at the same time, the continuing debate over the necessity of this policy and calls to reinstate it remind the country that Kameny’s ultimate goals have not yet been achieved. David Johnson’s smart, well-written, and truly engaging book clearly lays out the history of anti-gay sentiment in the modern federal government. It also, perhaps, hints at ways activists can continue to challenge discrimination in the future.

Photo credits:

United Press, Joseph Raymond McCarthy, 1954

Library of Commons via Wikimedia Commons

Kay Tobin Lahusen, “Barbara Gittings, Frank Kameny, and John Fryer in disguise as “Dr. H. Anonymous,”” 1972

New York Public Library Manuscripts and Archives Division via Wikimedia Commons

Undergraduate Essay Contest Honorable Mention: The Global Cold War by Odd Arne Westad (2007)

by Carson Stones

The Global Cold War by Odd Arne Westad is a fascinating account of superpower interventions in the Third World during the latter half of the twentieth century.Covering a wide sweep of history, Westad argues that the United States and the Soviet Union were driven to intervene in the Third World by the ideologies inherent in their politics.

Westad opens his book with an examination of the ideologies of the United States, the Soviet Union, and the post-colonial leaders before the Second World War. Emerging victorious from the war, Westad argues that the two countries believed it was their destiny to combat the competing ideas of modernity in the post-war era of decolonization. With the world divided between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, any country declaring independence outside the blocs was a potential battleground for the competing ideologies. In a conflict that lasted over forty years and affected billions of people worldwide, Westad highlights the events chronologically from the Korean Peninsula to Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa, and finally the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Seamlessly tying together seemingly unrelated incidents, The Global Cold War manages to take a bird’s eye view of history while still providing incredible details of the specific events, which turned the tide of the Cold War. Westad explains that each pivotal turn represented a new ideological shift for Moscow and Washington in the continuing struggle to win the hearts and minds of newly emerging countries. A few notable incidents from the book include the CIA operations in Guatemala, containment in Vietnam, and détente in Ethiopia. As this book proves, these superpower interventions only exacerbated the conflicts of diverse nationalities who were struggling to emerge from under the heels of Imperialism. The unfortunate result of these interventions was incredible bloodshed, environmental devastation, and millions displaced as refugees. The turning point of the book is the 1979 Iranian Revolution, preaching a new ideology, Islamism, which rejected both liberal capitalism and Marxist-Leninist socialism. The best chapters in the book follow the emergence of Islamism and the repercussions of its rapid spread in a two-bloc world.

This book provided a refreshing perspective on the Cold War as it related to the political and social developments in the Third World. Echoing Clausewitz, Westad calls the Cold War “a continuation of colonialism through slightly different means.” Anyone who reads this book will appreciate Westad’s tragically ironic statement that while both Moscow and Washington were formally opposed to colonialism, the “methods they used in imposing their vision of modernity on Third World countries were very similar to those of the European Empires who had gone before them.” This book will force readers to question the motives of American foreign policies which authorized assassinations, toppled democratically elected regimes, and supported dictatorships all in the name of protecting freedom and democracy from the evils of socialism around the globe.The conclusion of The Global Cold War is especially poignant when considering the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and the return of American troops this Christmas. Twenty years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union but the specter of the Cold War still haunts American foreign policy today. With the breakdown of the bipolar world, this book should encourage citizens around the world to question the motives of any country, which imposes an ideology upon their neighbors as humankind progresses into the twenty-first century.

Photo credits

Unknown photographer, Soldiers ride aboard a Soviet BMD airborne combat vehicle, Kabul, 25 March, 1986

DOD Media via Wikipedia

Check out the other winning and honorable mentions submissions for our First Annual Undergraduate Writing Contest:

William Wilson’s review of George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia

Lynn Romero’s review of Open Veins of Latin America

Katherine Maddox’s review of Beirut City Center Recovery

The Strangest Dream – Reykjavik 1986

by Jonathan Hunt

College freshmen have no personal knowledge of the Cold War. Born after the Berlin Wall’s fall and the Soviet Union’s collapse, the threat of nuclear Armageddon seems far removed from their experiences, a relic of a bygone age. Yet, today, more countries than ever hold weapons whose scale of destruction can dwarf that of every bomb used in World War II. As the Cold War nuclear arms race recedes from collective memory, it is important to remember why the world remains beneath the shadow of the mushroom cloud.

This October 11th and 12th, the world observed the 25th anniversary of the summit between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986, where the leaders of the world’s superpowers contemplated the abolition of nuclear weapons. The talks remain the closest humanity has come to stopping the accumulation and proliferation of nuclear arms. Twenty-five years later, historians still debate the summit’s legacy. Even if the nuclear colossi had adopted Gorbachev’s plan to disarm in three stages by 2000, only their fine example would have persuaded Great Britain, France, China, India, and Israel to join them. Reading the minutes of the four meetings at Reykjavik, it is also unclear if gravity bombs like the ones that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been eliminated. Nevertheless, during those two autumn days, Reagan and Gorbachev neared the brink of a nuclear-free world, only to turn back in defeat.

It seems, ironically, that Reagan’s abhorrence of nuclear weapons scuttled the talks. As president, Reagan made research and development of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), an anti-missile shield derisively known as “Star Wars,” a centerpiece of his strategic policy. Nuclear abolitionists condemned the project as a multi-billion dollar boondoggle and a slippery slope toward normalizing the military use of nuclear weapons. Strategists weaned on the Cold War doctrine of mutual assured destruction warned that its construction could prompt the Soviet Union to launch a preemptive first strike. For Reagan, SDI represented a means by which to make nuclear weapons obsolete and an insurance policy if a “madman” ever got his hands on them. Gorbachev disagreed, and saw limits on SDI as indispensible if the USSR was to trust its rival to disarm.

At Reykjavik, Soviet and American negotiators smoothed over rough spot after rough spot, agreeing to limits and sub-limits on an array of nuclear delivery systems—bombs, cruise missiles, sub-launched, medium-range, and intercontinental ballistic missiles. More progress was made in 36 hours than the previous 15 years combined. Paul Nitze, the president’s special adviser on arms control and a fixture in U.S. foreign policymaking throughout the Cold War, remarked Soviet concessions were “the best we have received in 25 years.” When Reagan and Gorbachev began their fourth and final meeting, they knew the stakes: an historic agreement for deep arms cuts and eventual disarmament. They also knew the final and toughest challenge; how to finesse Reagan’s steely support for SDI and Gorbachev’s stand that the U.S. confine R&D to the labs.

Initial expectations for Reykjavik had been modest. Recurrent crises had beset U.S.-Soviet relations since Reagan took office. The White House’s more confrontational tone, the shooting down of a wayward Korean airliner over Soviet territory, the deployment of quick-strike missiles in Europe, and an alarming NATO nuclear exercise codenamed Able Archer, compounded an already fraught relationship. However, conditions eventually improved. Reagan assumed a more conciliatory line so as to facilitate arms control initiatives and lessen the chances of an accidental nuclear exchange. It was Gorbachev’s rise to power in 1985, however, that transformed the tenor of the Cold War by infusing new life into a listless Soviet system. Following a series of three elderly statesmen whose best days were behind them, he was confronted by an economic system with chronic shortages and, in April 1986, a catastrophic meltdown of the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, Ukraine. Gorbachev insisted that “new thinking” be applied to the USSR’s manifold problems, and espoused the policies of perestroika, restructuring the Soviet economy, and glasnost, making the government more open and responsive. A major element of perestroika was redirecting the river of resources flowing into the state’s military-industrial complex, especially the secret agencies managing the USSR’s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs, to more productive ends. Unable and unwilling to keep pace with U.S. military spending, Gorbachev instead offered a three-step plan to liquidate the superpowers’ nuclear weapons.

It was a bold initiative, but Gorbachev’s labors were close to bearing fruit when he and Reagan sat down for their last tête-à-tête. Reagan promised to share advances in missile defense with the Soviets. Gorbachev fired back that the U.S. had thus far been unwilling to share even industrial and agricultural technology with his country. Just when the statesmen seemed to have exhausted their cases, Gorbachev’s foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, urged them to cross the finish line, declaring they had “come very close to accomplishing this historic task … [a]nd when future generations read the record … they will not forgive us if we let this opportunity slip by.” Despite Shevardnadze’s appeal, however, Reagan and Gorbachev failed to agree on the wording of the final text. The two negotiating parties left Reykjavik without an agreement.

Sadly, subsequent generations have more often forgotten than condemned the talks. The calamity of climate change is more familiar to our undergraduates than the firestorm of nuclear war and the long night of the ensuing nuclear winter. In the 1980s, scientists theorized that only 200 thermonuclear explosions would kick up a planetary shroud of radioactive dust, lowering temperatures enough to recreate the climactic conditions in which the dinosaurs died off. Five countries—the U.S., Russia, Great Britain, France, and China—have more than 200 warheads. The U.S. and Russia are currently reducing their arsenals to 1,550 deliverable warheads. A conflict between India and Pakistan, who fought four wars since 1947, where nuclear weapons were used would jeopardize the continuation of life, as we know it.

Current global affairs hardly resemble the global situation in 1986 when two nuclear-armed superpowers testily eyed one another. Yet some themes have reoccurred. Just as the Soviet Union fiscal emergency forced Gorbachev to offer a plan to nuclear disarmament, today’s financial crisis could pave the way for deep multilateral arms cuts. The nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan augurs lessons similar to those of Chernobyl regarding the uncontrollable nature of nuclear power. It remains for the leaders of today to take advantage of their window of opportunity.

For two days on a remote archipelago in the North Atlantic, Reagan and Gorbachev discussed the entwined destinies of the Cold War and nuclear arms. As educators, we must remind our students of such moments, when history conspires to grant individuals the occasion to re-route its course. Reykjavik’s great tragedy is not its failure; after all, the negotiations paved the way for two momentous treaties—the 1987 Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile Treaty and the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Its tragedy resides in its potential disappearance from our collective memory. For our students’ generation will have to address this dangerous legacy of the Cold War—even if they don’t remember it.

You may also like:

Reuters, Mikhail Gorbachev, “A Farewell to Nuclear Arms,” October 11, 2011

“The Reykjavik File: Previously Secret Documents from U.S. and Soviet Archives on the 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev Summit, from the collections of The National Security Archive, George Washington University, Washington DC.

Jonathan Hunt and Paul Walker, “The Legacy of Reykjavik and the Future of Nuclear Disarmament,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Nov/Dec 2011.

Photo Credits:
Federal Government via Wikimedia Commons

The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War by Greg Grandin (2004)

by Cristina Metz

The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War combines incisive analysis of Cold War repression in Guatemala with a history of the country’s century-long mobilization leading up to the 1978 Panzós massacre that resulted in the deaths of Q’eqchi’ Maya men, women, and children. The Panzós massacre launched an intense and brutal escalation of violence, the effects of which continue to reverberate in contemporary Guatemalan society. Grandin’s purpose is manifold. First, he attempts to draw connections between individual identity and political activism. Second, he refutes the North American scholarship that views the Maya as impressionable bystanders caught in the crossfire between the military and the guerrilla. Finally, he historicizes the Cold War, nullifying attempts to naturalize the violence and repression it engendered throughout Latin America.

Alta Verapaz, an important coffee-growing region in northeast Guatemala, has historically been at the center of land disputes between majority Q’eqchi’ Maya and ladino and European settlers. Through the lives of four important figures—José Angel Icó, Alfredo Cucul, Efraín Reyes Maaz, and Adelina Caal—Grandin traces the struggle for land reform there, the end to forced labor, and greater social democratization. Icó, for instance, led a “seditious life” because he rebelled against the authority of the landowning elite by not following traditional paths to male power, though acquiring it nonetheless. He held considerable rural power, stemming from much the same sources as those of the state. Icó wielded his power to weaken a system that reinforced the social and political supremacy of Ladino and foreign elites. Each of these individuals gained new insights concerning their individual roles in the world around them, due in part to their participation in mass politics. Their political development (which was not unique given that many Guatemalans, indigenous and ladino, rural and urban, increasingly mobilized around social causes from at least the 1950s on) dispels analyses that rob Maya of their agency.

Panzós, a municipality of Alta Verapaz, is the location of what Grandin dubs, “the last colonial massacre.” In 1865, a group of Maya peasants appealed to the local government of Carchá, a few miles away from Panzós, for protection against the landed elite. Their demands were met with violent repression. In 1978, a large group of Q’eqchi’s suffered a similar end when they attempted to present their demands to local administrators. Both of these events seem to be by-the-book peasant revolts, but there is something unique about what happened in 1978. This twentieth-century massacre marked the beginning of a new type of counterinsurgent violence that soon spread to other Latin American nations. In tracing the intentionality and premeditation behind Cold War counterinsurgency tactics that transformed the protective power of the state into one that suppressed an internal enemy, Grandin convincingly exposes the “Cold War’s most important legacy”: the destruction of democracy.

Perhaps the greatest contribution of this book is its presentation of a history of individuals neither privileged in life nor in the historical record who have had a lasting effect on other politically active Guatemalans. We know from the outset that Grandin seeks to understand how Q’eqchi’ Maya reformers developed a political consciousness, an identity. This is, among many things, an exploration of how people mold ideology to fit their particular world, their struggle, and what they believe to be their role as engaged citizens.

The wealth of primary and secondary source material used is truly impressive and is another significant contribution of this work to the historiography of repression and state violence in Latin America. Notably, Grandin employs truth commission reports as proper historical sources, which does much to counter critiques of the truth commissions and their reports, Critics contend that these fell short of their lofty goals, to recover the history of state violence and to ensure that history never repeats itself. Maybe it is more precise to say that, in the Guatemalan case at least, the purpose of the truth commissions and their reports was not to ensure that “it” would never happen again; rather, that the point was to preclude a post-civil war, post-Cold War “democracy” from forgetting. The Last Colonial Massacre is a testament to many things, not least of which, is the long life and far-reaching impact of this aspect of the Guatemalan peace process.

Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John Dower (1999)

Before John Dower’s Embracing Defeat, many English-language accounts of the United States’ occupation of Japan contextualized the event in terms of American foreign policy and the emerging Cold War. Scholars writing from this Western-centric perspective produced much fine scholarship, and no doubt will continue to do so. But Embracing Defeat shifted the discussion from a debate over American motives to an analysis of the Japanese experience, and in doing so won critical acclaim and popular success. This Pulitzer Prize-winning tome reveals to Western audiences what many in Japan have long understood: that the American occupation was, in many ways, the most transformative event in modern Japanese history.

Dower sets out to convey “some sense of the Japanese experience of defeat by focusing on social and cultural developments. . . at all levels of society.” Initially, the bitter reality that their exhausting war had ended in defeat proved profoundly demoralizing for many Japanese citizens. Dower’s portrayal of the shantytowns of bombed-out Tokyo provides poignant evidence of the impoverished condition in which many Japanese found themselves at war’s end. But as Japan embarked on its long occupation interlude, its citizens seized opportunities to start over, rebuild, and redefine their nation. Defeat became a creative process rather than a destructive one and the people of Japan embraced it with eagerness. In the atmosphere of reform that characterized the occupation, an efflorescence of what Dower calls “cultures of defeat” emerged. For example, kasutori culture explored the sleazy underside of urban life. Radical political movements tested the limits—and sincerity—of American reformism. Changes in artistic images, popular entertainment, songs, jokes, and even the Japanese language itself reflect the vitality and diversity of Japanese culture during the American occupation.

An aerial view of a destroyed residential area of Tokyo after the fire raids.

Dower’s Japan-centered perspective informs his judgment of the occupiers, whom he views as agents of imperialism as well as facilitators of positive change. If the occupation was a prologue to a new period of Japanese history, it was also the epilogue to an era of Western exploitation that began when Commodore Matthew Perry forced Japan to “open” to Western trade in the middle of the nineteenth century. Dower calls the occupation “the last immodest exercise in the colonial conceit known as ‘the white man’s burden.’” The occupiers, under the leadership of the notoriously vain Douglas MacArthur, lived in enclaves of lavish comfort and issued imperious edicts. Nevertheless, Dower concedes that American reforms were “impressively liberal,” and he is critical of those in Japan and Washington who resisted reform. This group includes Japanese conservative politicians as well as the “old Japan hands” in the U.S. Department of State. To Dower, these were old-fashioned elitists who sought to restrict the influence of average citizens in the new Japan. Dower’s interpretation of the American occupation as a neocolonial as well as a progressive exercise rings true, but it is a delicate balancing act.

Embracing Defeat has received high praise in the academic and popular presses, and justly so. Nevertheless, the book has certain limitations. Dower concentrates almost exclusively on the experiences of urban-dwelling Japanese. The half of the population that lived in rural areas suffered more than their share of hardship during the war, and their story of change and recovery during the occupation is as fascinating as it is neglected. Still, Dower’s exploration of urban cultures in the occupation period is a monumental task, and he executes it marvelously. Embracing Defeat‘s engrossing account of social change during the American occupation of Japan has earned it a permanent place in the literature of that epochal event.

Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York by Samuel Zipp (2010)

by Kyle Shelton

In the 1970s the United Nations complex and the public housing projects of East Harlem projected two disparate images of New York City. If the UN displayed the city’s position as a global capital of culture, politics, and economics, the deteriorating housing projects showed the city’s struggles with overcrowding, high crime rates, and poverty. According to historian Samuel Zipp, the roots of this contradictory double-identity reach back to the rise and fall of the city’s post-World War II urban renewal efforts.

The usual story of urban renewal in America is one of powerful officials, such as New York’s Robert Moses, wielding great power to remake entire cities as they saw fit. Zipp’s Manhattan Projects departs from this narrative by arguing that urban renewal represented a more complicated, contentious process carried out by New Yorkers from all races, classes, and city neighborhoods. For Zipp, renewal politics highlighted questions about what the city should look like, whose interests it should serve, and who would control its remaking. Starting with the celebrated construction of the United Nations complex in 1948 and moving up through the battles over public housing projects in East Harlem in the late 1960s, Manhattan Projects shows how competing visions of renewal and the contests that revolved around its implementation could create symbols of both cultural significance and urban decline.

In the early years of the Cold War, many New Yorkers viewed urban renewal as a “benevolent intervention” that would turn run-down and crowded streets into modern showcases for American democracy and strength. Early renewal efforts stemmed from an “ethic of city rebuilding” that focused on creating an ordered and open city. Zipp argues that the United Nations represented America’s attempts to help remake the world through internationalism and remake the city through modern architecture and superblock construction. In both cases, the goal was to order chaos, whether it was caused by war or overcrowding. Few complained about the UN’s destruction of an old meatpacking district. Instead, the city celebrated renewal’s ability to bring a site of international significance to life from a collection of abandoned abattoirs.

Celebration of redevelopment ebbed, however, when renewal officials sited several projects in the heart of old residential neighborhoods. Rather than accepting the destruction of their homes and communities, many New Yorkers pushed back against renewal. Zipp argues that the rise of resident activism had a contradictory impact on the shape of the city. On the one hand, activism helped preserve historic neighborhoods and prevented displacement of many New Yorkers. On the other, these protests led to the decline of urban renewal as a viable public project. That decline led to the deterioration of public housing and, when combined with segregation that limited the occupational and residential opportunities of many people of color, helped precipitate the urban crises of 1960s and 1970s. Using the building of Lincoln Center and the development of public housing projects throughout the city as examples, Zipp demonstrates the irony of this anti-renewal activism. It protected the close-knit, older neighborhoods of the activists, even as it pushed officials to abandon the residents of public housing projects to a fate of faltering services and non-existent civic support.

By delving deeply into the local politics surrounding the construction of several of New York City’s most iconic landmarks, Manhattan Projects demonstrates that urban renewal’s legacy stretched well beyond the concrete foundations of its projects and the large personalities of its leaders. Renewal fostered competing imaginings of the city’s future, jumpstarted important debates over the meanings and pursuit of progress, and resulted in the formation social issues that continue to shape the city—and its growth—to this day.

The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War by Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko (2008)

by Yana Skorobogatov

Any work of history that attributes the start of the Cold War to a single factor will surely invite criticism, but Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko’s The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War makes a compelling case for running that risk.

Craig and Radchenko arguethat the specter of the atomic bomb shaped the ways in which the U.S. and U.S.S.R. designed their own and reacted to each other’s foreign policy agendas during the early years of the Cold War. The authors trace the first signs of an impending Anglo-American split with the Soviet Union to August 1943, when FDR and Winston Churchill decided to keep information about the building of an atomic bomb in Los Alamos a secret from the world, or from the Soviet Union in particular. Failure to establish a system of international control over atomic weaponry before FDR’s death further polarized American and Soviet relations during the Truman presidency, a period of haphazard atomic policy that coincided with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Secrecy and mistrust plagued Soviet-American relations from then on, sentiments that grew manifest in clandestine Soviet bomb construction projects and atomic espionage. News of Soviet espionage made cooperation with Stalin a matter of political suicide for Truman and left dismal chances for creating an international body to neutralize the threat of nuclear war.

Craig and Radchenko offer valuable insight into the practical concerns that plagued American and Soviet deliberations over atomic weapon development, use, and policy. Indeed, at certain points the book more closely resembles a work of diplomatic policy than diplomatic history. For instance, they outline in great detail precisely why the advent of atomic technology prevented Soviet-American cooperation from fomenting during the immediate postwar years. For cooperation to occur, both countries would have had to submit to a larger international body that would seize their atomic bombs, monitor their operations, and have the power to intervene in their internal affairs when necessary. Essentially, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. would have had to relinquish claims to their own national sovereignty and positions of power and answer to an international body in semblance of an all-powerful state. The likelihood of this happening, as Craig and Radchenko state with hints of humor, was slim to none.

A nuclear test carried out at the Nevada Test Site on March 29, 1955 as part of Operation Teapot. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

One point where Craig and Radchenko’s analysis runs astray from the historical record is during their discussion of American scientists and their impact on early atomic diplomacy. The authors boldly assert that “when one is interested in assessing American policy about the bomb after 1944…one must recognize that the scientists’ actual effect on it had become inconsequential.” Surely this is a contentious point. As the historian Matthew Evangelista notes in his survey on the role of scientists in affecting Cold War nuclear policy, U.S. and Soviet scientists met at the Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva in as early as 1955. Craig’s claim, however, is made less egregious by his astute discussion of Igor Kurchatov and other Soviet scientists lobbying the Politburo for the resources to build a Soviet atomic bomb before the Americans built their own. The battle between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. for scientific prestige and innovation in the modern age resonates throughout this book, and infuses the authors’ historical intervention with a contemporary flavor that speaks to the present-day relevance of the subject.

Further reading:

Atom Days: the History of the Nuclear Age

Matthew Evangelista’s Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War

The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II: A Collection of Primary Sources courtesy of the National Security Archive

For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War by Melvyn P. Leffler (2008)

by Michelle Reeves

In this accessible and remarkably balanced synthesis, Melvyn Leffler, one of the most distinguished and prominent historians of American foreign relations, offers a refreshing interpretation of Cold War policymaking from the vantage points of both Washington and Moscow. Rejecting the oft-repeated assertion that U.S. foreign policymakers were ignorant or inattentive to the realities of power in the Soviet Union and the complexities of Third World nationalism, Leffler argues that cold warriors on both sides of the iron curtain were in fact keenly aware of the liabilities inherent in the zero-sum approach to international politics. Benefiting from access to multiple archives and a clear command of the secondary historical literature, Leffler has crafted a persuasive and thoroughly documented analysis that recasts the Cold War as not simply a political, economic, or military confrontation, but a battle “for the soul of mankind.” In doing so, he has transcended the scholarly debate over whether economic, structural, or ideological factors were more influential in determining the course of Cold War history.

Rather than adopting a standard narrative approach, Leffler focuses on both American and Soviet political leadership during five distinct intervals of potential détente—Truman and Stalin and the origins of the Cold War; Eisenhower and Malenkov during the power struggle within the Kremlin in the wake of Stalin’s death; Khrushchev, Kennedy, and LBJ in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis; Carter and Brezhnev and the erosion of détente; and finally, Gorbachev, Reagan, and Bush, and the end of the Cold War. Leffler argues that, while the decisions of policymakers were clearly shaped by perceptions of both threat and opportunity, the constraints of the international system within which they operated also severely circumscribed their freedom of action.

U.S. President Harry Truman and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin alongside their advisors at the Potsdam Conference, July 18, 1945. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

This raises a conceptual problem with Leffler’s analysis, however. Although emphasizing contingency as a major factor in the arc of history, Leffler argues that Cold War leaders were trapped within ideological prisons of their own making, suggesting perhaps that the trajectory of the Cold War was more predetermined than he allows for. And viewing the time periods he has chosen for analysis here as moments of missed opportunity, he proceeds to prove that American and Soviet policymakers were so limited in their options that they had little choice other than to behave as they did. If that is in fact the case, the reader is left wondering whether there truly were opportunities for peace during these critical junctures.

These criticisms should not, however, obscure the fact that Leffler has written one of the most eloquent, balanced, and extensively researched books on the Cold War. “For the Soul of Mankind” certainly raises the bar for scholars of the Cold War, and in its nuanced complexity, elevates the scholarly debate over which factors were more salient in the development of Cold War policymaking. Although not definitive (and what monograph on such a huge topic possibly could be?), “For the Soul of Mankind” will likely grace both undergraduate and graduate level required reading lists for years to come.

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