The Cold War and Latin American Area Studies in the Former USSR: Reflections and Reminiscences

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 115-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell H. Bartley
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Academic Fields ◽  
Nation States ◽  
America Latina ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Former Ussr

All bodies of scholarship reflect societal mindsets and ideologies. Academic fields of geopolitical area studies exemplify this fact, having developed historically in response to the global objectives and related policy requirements of major nation-states over the past century and a half. In the case of Latin American area studies, the field was given decisive impetus by the Cold War, as were the related fields of Soviet and United States studies in each of the two contending superpowers. Discussion of a representative selection of Latin Americanists in the former USSR, their varied statuses within the Soviet academic establishment, and their professional relations with their U.S counterparts and of the development of Soviet Latin American area studies from the post–World War II years down to the demise of the USSR in the early 1990s makes clear that both Soviet and American academic establishments were constrained by Cold War political imperatives and accompanying mindsets that hampered but did not preclude the pursuit and achievement of genuine scholarship. Todos los campos de estudio reflejan mentalidades e ideologías sociales. Los campos académicos de los estudios geopolíticos dan ejemplo de esto, dado que se desarrollaron en respuesta a los objetivos globales y requisitos políticos pertinentes de las principales naciones-estado durante el último siglo y medio. Los estudios sobre América Latina recibieron un impulso decisivo durante la Guerra Fría, junto con los estudios soviéticos y estadounidenses en cada una de las dos superpotencias contendientes. Un vistazo a una selección representativa de latinoamericanistas en la antigua URSS, sus variantes condiciones dentro del status quo académico soviético, y sus relaciones profesionales con sus contrapartes estadounidenses, así como al desarrollo de los estudios soviéticos sobre América Latina después la Segunda Guerra Mundial y hasta la desaparición de la URSS a principios de la década de 1990, dejan en claro que tanto los establecimientos académicos soviéticos como estadounidenses estaban constreñidos por los imperativos políticos de la Guerra Fría y la mentalidad acompañante. Esto obstaculizaba, pero no impedía, la búsqueda y el logro de auténtica investigación.

Da Segunda Guerra Mundial à Guerra Fria: políticas militares estadunidenses para a América Latina (1943-1947)

Diálogos ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 157
Author(s):  
Dennison De Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Advisory Board ◽  
World War ◽  
Us Military ◽  
National Archives ◽  
America Latina ◽  
The Cold War

O texto interpreta a atuação de organizações militares e diplomáticas estadunidenses dedicadas à América Latina. O contexto é o da transição da Segunda Guerra Mundial à Guerra Fria. A base empírica é composta por diferentes documentos mantidos nos Arquivos Nacionais dos EUA (US National Archives) do acervo do Comitê Consultivo Conjunto das Repúblicas Americanas, (Joint Advisory Board on the American Republics - JAB) cobrindo o período 1940-1945. O comitê estava encarregado de propor e executar políticas ligadas à Defesa Hemisférica a serem desenvolvidas em conjunto com os países da América Latina na guerra e no pós-guerra. Abstract From World War II to the Cold War: US military policies for Latin America (1943-1947) The text interprets the performance of US military and diplomatic organizations dedicated to Latin America. The context is that of the transition from World War II to the Cold War. The empirical basis is composed of different documents maintained in the US National Archives of the collection of the Joint Advisory Board of the American Republics (JAB) covering the period 1940-1945. The committee was charged with proposing and implementing policies related to Hemispheric Defense to be developed jointly with the Latin American countries in war and postwar. Resumen De la Segunda Guerra Mundial a la Guerra Fría: políticas militares estadounidenses para América Latina (1943-1947) El texto interpreta la actuación de las organizaciones militares y diplomáticas estadounidenses dedicadas a América Latina. El contexto es el de la transición de la Segunda Guerra Mundial a la Guerra Fría. La base empírica está compuesta por diferentes documentos mantenidos en los Archivos Nacionales de los Estados Unidos (US National Archives) del acervo del Comité Consultivo Conjunto de las Repúblicas Americanas (JAB) cubriendo el período 1940-1945. El comité estaba encargado de proponer y ejecutar políticas vinculadas a la Defensa Hemisférica a ser desarrolladas en conjunto con los países de América Latina en la guerra y en la posguerra.

The United States and Asia

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Ellings ◽  
Joshua Ziemkowski
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
World War ◽  
Scholarly Research ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
The Cold War

The United States’ experience with Asia goes back to 1784. Over the subsequent two-and-a-third centuries scholarly research grew in fits and starts, reflecting historical developments: the growth of US interests and interdependencies in the region; the wars in Asia in which the United States fought; the ascendance of the United States to international leadership; and the post–World War II resurgence of Asia led by Japan, then the four tigers, and most dramatically China. The definition of Asia evolved correspondingly. Today, due to strategic and economic interdependencies, scholars tend to view it as incorporating Northeast, Southeast, South, and Central Asia and Russian Asia as well as relevant portions of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The most recent US National Security Strategy (White House 2017, cited under Contemporary US-Asia Relations: General) reconceives the Asia-Pacific as the Indo-Pacific, stretching “from the west coast of India to the western shores of the United States” and constituting “the most populous and economically dynamic part of the world” (pp. 45–46) The first Asia scholars came to prominence in the United States during World War II, and the Cold War strengthened the impetus for interdisciplinary area and regional studies. Through the middle and late Cold War years, social scientists and historians concentrated further, but they increasingly looked inward at the development of their separate disciplines, away from interdisciplinary area studies as conceived in the 1940s and 1950s. While area studies declined, barriers between academia and the policy world emerged. Many scholars disapproved of the Vietnam War. “Revisionists” in the international relations, foreign policy, and area studies fields held that US policy and the extension of global capitalism were conjoined, suppressing both economic development and indigenous political movements in Asia and elsewhere. Simultaneously, behavioral science and postmodernist movements in policy-relevant fields developed. In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Theory and methodology overtook the old approach of area-specific research that tried to integrate knowledge of the history, culture, language, politics, and economics of particular nations or subregions. Theory and methodology prevailed in research, tenure, and promotion. Policy-relevant studies became viewed as “applied” science. Another factor was money. Already under pressure, area studies was dealt a major blow at the end of the Cold War with cutbacks. Research on policy issues related to the United States and Asia increasingly came from think tanks that housed scholars themselves and/or contracted with university-based specialists. In recent years due to the rapid development of China and the urgent challenges it presents, interest in policy-relevant topics has revived on campuses and in scholarly research, especially in the international relations and modern history of the Indo-Pacific and the politics, economics, environment, and foreign and military affairs of China. Interest has revived too in the subregions of Asia, much of it driven by Chinese activities abroad.

Globalization and Digital Revolution

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fritz Heimann ◽  
Stefan Mbiyavanga
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
World War ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Digital Revolution ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Globalized Economy ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Alliance System

The development of a globalized economy has been one of the most influential developments of the past quarter century. It has redefined the arena where corruption is conducted and has changed the focus of anticorruption strategy. And the expansion of globalization will continue in coming decades. The period from the end of World War II until 1990 was characterized by the bipolar world of the Cold War. Economic life was conducted primarily at the level of nation-states operating within the ambit of the alliance system of the Cold War. The end of the Cold War stimulated the evolution of globalization.

Soviet Campaigns against “Capitalist Ideological Subversives” during the Cold War: The Latvian Experience

2010 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 91-114
Author(s):  
Ieva Zake
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
World War ◽  
Liaison Committee ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Political Refugees ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Former Ussr

This article discusses the Soviet Union's use of propaganda warfare during the Cold War, focusing on the specific case of Soviet Latvia. Archival materials from recently opened archives in the former USSR show that the Soviet Union pursued a methodical ideological campaign against certain groups of U.S. citizens, including the post-World War II political refugees from Latvia. The main institution charged with this task was the Liaison Committee for the Cultural Relations with Countrymen Abroad (LCCR), which was highly influential at the time. Archival materials allow scholars to examine the LCCR's history, methods, and goals, as well as its successes and failures. Among the findings in the article is the importance the Soviet Union attached to propaganda and to programs to counter and discredit “anti-Soviet” émigré organizations.

scholarly journals Una Investigación Histórica sobre la Formación del Bloque Hegemónico de los Estados Unidos en las Américas

2020 ◽  
pp. 247-277
Author(s):  
Elaheh Nourigholamizadeh
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
America Latina ◽  
Domestic Affairs ◽  
The Cold War

Desde la Doctrina Monroe (1823) hasta el final de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, los Estados Unidos tomó gradualmente el lugar de las potencias colonialistas europeas en América Latina y empleó una amplia gama de los compromisos políticos en los países de región que le brindaron una potencia dominante en el hemisferio occidental. Durante la Guerra Fría, las políticas intervencionistas de los EE.UU. en los asuntos domésticos de los países latinoamericanos establecieron la “hegemonía estadounidense en América Latina”. Una investigación histórica sobre las relaciones de los países americanos muestra que según la perspectiva neo-Gramsciana, la hegemonía liberal de los EE.UU. en América Latina es preservada y promovida por tres pilares: cultura liberal; organizaciones interamericanas; y capacidades militares y económicas. Estos tres pilares también se han extendido a otras partes del mundo. From the Monroe Doctrine (1823) to the end of World War II, the United States gradually took the place of the European colonial powers in Latin America and employed a wide range of political engagements in the countries of the region that gave it a dominant power in the Western Hemisphere. During the Cold War, US interventionist policies in the domestic affairs of the Latin American countries established the “American hegemony in Latin America”. A historical research on the U.S-Latin America relations shows that according to the neo-Gramscian perspective, US liberal hegemony in Latin America is preserved and promoted by three pillars: liberal culture; inter-American organizations; and US military and economic capabilities. These three pillars have also spread to other parts of the world.

The Unassailable Self: Freud's Image Among Post-war American Intellectuals

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Jenness
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
External Force ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Human Being ◽  
World War ◽  
The Us ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Way

This paper explores the way American intellectuals depicted Sigmund Freud during the peak of popularity and prestige of psychoanalysis in the US, roughly the decade and a half following World War II. These intellectuals insisted upon the unassailability of Freud's mind and personality. He was depicted as unsusceptible to any external force or influence, a trait which was thought to account for Freud's admirable comportment as a scientist, colleague and human being. This post-war image of Freud was shaped in part by the Cold War anxiety that modern individuality was imperilled by totalitarian forces, which could only be resisted by the most rugged of selves. It was also shaped by the unique situation of the intellectuals themselves, who were eager to position themselves, like the Freud they imagined, as steadfastly independent and critical thinkers who would, through the very clarity of their thought, lead America to a more robust democracy.

Comparative Area Studies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Berg-Schlosser
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Ivory Coast ◽  
Qualitative Comparative Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
International Context ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Cross Area Studies ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Analytical Approaches

Area studies have undergone significant changes over the last two decades. They have been transformed from mostly descriptive accounts in the international context of the Cold War to theory-oriented and methodological analytical approaches. More recent comparative methods such as “Qualitative Comparative Analysis” (QCA) and related approaches, which are particularly suitable for medium N studies, have significantly contributed to this development. This essay discusses the epistemological background of this approach as well as recent developments. It provides two examples of current “cross area studies,” one concerned with successful democratic transformations across four regions (Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and East Asia), the other with political participation in marginalized settlements in four countries (Brazil, Chile, Ivory Coast, Kenya) in a multilevel analysis. The conclusion points to the theoretical promises of this approach and its practical-political relevance.

Cold War Exiles and the CIA

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Tromly
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
West Germany ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Home Base ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Secret War

During the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, the United States government unleashed covert operations intended to weaken the Soviet Union. As part of these efforts, the CIA undertook support of Russian exiles, populations uprooted either during World War II or by the Russian Revolution decades before. No one seemed better prepared to fight in the American secret war against communism than the uprooted Russians, whom the CIA directed to carry out propaganda, espionage, and subversion operations from their home base in West Germany. Yet the American engagement of Russian exiles had unpredictable outcomes. Drawing on recently declassified and previously untapped sources, Cold War Exiles and the CIA examines how the CIA’s Russian operations became entangled with the internal struggles of Russia abroad and also the espionage wars of the superpowers in divided Germany. What resulted was a transnational political sphere involving different groups of Russian exiles, American and German anti-communists, and spies operating on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Inadvertently, CIA’s patronage of Russian exiles forged a complex sub-front in the wider Cold War, demonstrating the ways in which the hostilities of the Cold War played out in ancillary conflicts involving proxies and non-state actors.

National Security and Public Anxiety: Our Changing Perceptions

2010 ◽  
pp. 32-40
Author(s):  
Sir Richard Dearlove
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Security Threats ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Private Citizens ◽  
Russian Military ◽  
Full Force ◽  
The Cold War

This article discusses the changing perceptions on national security and civic anxiety. During the Cold War and its aftermath, security was rather a simple and straightforward issue. The countries knew their enemies, where they are and the threats they presented. On the event that, the enemies's secrets were unknown, probing techniques were employed to determine the weaknesses of the enemy. This formulaic situation which seeped through in to the twenty-first century left little room for innovation. In fact, in some countries, security maintained at the Cold War levels despite criticisms that new and emerging national security threats should be addressed at a new level. Of the powerful nations, America maintained the role of a world policeman and adapted its national security priorities according to its perception of a new series of strategic threats; however these new security strategies were without a sense of urgency. However, the perception of global threats and national security radically changed in the event of the 9/11 attack. The sleeping national security priorities of America came to a full force which affected the national security priorities of other nations as well. In the twenty-first globalized world, no conflict remains a regional clash. The reverberations of the Russian military action in Georgia, the Israeli intervention in Gaza, and the results of the attacks in Mumbai resonates loudly and rapidly through the wider international security system. While today, nations continue to seek new methods for addressing new security threats, the paradox of the national security policy is that nation-states have lost their exclusive grip of their own security at a time when the private citizens are assailed by increased fears for their own security and demand a more enhanced safety from the state. Nation-states have been much safer from large-scale violence, however there exists a strong sense of anxiety about the lack of security in the face of multiplicity of threats. Nations have been largely dependent on international coordinated action to achieve their important national security objectives. National policies and security theory lack precision. In addition, the internationalization of national security has eroded the distinction between domestic and foreign security. These blurring lines suggest that the understanding of national security is still at the height of transformations.

Revisiting the 1954 Coup in Guatemala: The Soviet Union, the United Nations, and “Hemispheric Solidarity”

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Denise Getchell
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Good Neighbor ◽  
The Cold War

This article reevaluates the U.S.-backed coup in 1954 that overthrew Guatemala's democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán. The coup is generally portrayed as the opening shot of the Cold War in the Western Hemisphere and a watershed moment for U.S.–Latin American relations, when the United States supplanted its Good Neighbor Policy with a hardline anti-Communist approach. Despite the extensive literature on the coup, the Soviet Union's perspectives on the matter have received scant discussion. Using Soviet-bloc and United Nations (UN) archival sources, this article shows that Latin American Communists and Soviet sympathizers were hugely influential in shaping Moscow's perceptions of hemispheric relations. Although regional Communists petitioned the Soviet Union to provide support to Árbenz, officials in Moscow were unwilling to prop up what they considered a “bourgeois-democratic” revolution tottering under the weight of U.S. military pressure. Soviet leaders were, however, keen to use their position on the UN Security Council to challenge the authority of the Organization of American States and undermine U.S. conceptions of “hemispheric solidarity.” The coup, moreover, revealed the force of anti-U.S. nationalism in Latin America during a period in which Soviet foreign policy was in flux and the Cold War was becoming globalized.

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