DEPARTMENT OF History

module handbook

2008-2009

rethinking the cold war

Co-ordinator: Dr. Christoph Mick

Table of Contents

Module Aims 3

Syllabus:

Seminar 1: Official Mindsets: Leadership Attitudes in the Cold War 4

Seminar 2: Taking Sides: Intellectuals and the Politics of High Culture 7

Seminar 3: Organisation Men and Apparatchiks:

Functional Elites, East and West 11

Seminar 4: Atomic Society: Science and the Bomb 13

Seminar 5: Imagining the Other: Propaganda and Public Opinion 17

Seminar 6: Witchhunts against the Enemy Within 20

Seminar 7: The Politics of Low Culture: Consumerism and its Discontents 22

Seminar 8: Third Ways: Dissident Voices for Peace and Human Rights 24

Illustrative Bibliography 26

Module Aims

This module, taught in the Autumn Term, acts as an introductory core course for students on the MA in Society and Culture in the Cold War, but may also be taken by other taught Master's students inside or outside the History Department. It explores recent cultural and social histories of Cold War 'home fronts', shifting the focus away from international relations to the internal politics and protest movements on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Primary sources include public speeches, secret conversations, opinion surveys, novels and films, as well as contemporary analyses by Cold War writers. The module is also designed to introduce students to a broad cross-section of society, from leadership and artistic elites, to button-pushers within the opposing military-industrial complexes, to rank-and-file workers and dissident intellectuals. Participants will be asked to consider both the similarities and differences of East-West constructions of the Cold War 'other', applying interdisciplinary approaches from political, social and cultural history, as well as literary and film studies.

Seminar 1: Official Mindsets: Leadership Attitudes in the Cold War

The study of the Cold War before 1989 was traditionally divided between historians and political scientists, with the latter borrowing heavily from game theory and other rationally-based models to explain issues such as deterrence. Historians, too, tended to focus on the top-level decision-making in the Pentagon and inside the various foreign policy establishments, primarily of the West, but took many documents at face value. The fall of the Wall in 1989 has led to a welter of archive-based historical studies behind the former Iron Curtain, part of the so-called 'New Cold War history', many of which revealed communists talking 'newspeak' behind closed doors rather than 'rational' discourse. Consequently, and as a result of the growing interest in cultural history following the 'linguistic turn' of the 1980s, traditional areas of foreign policy have been revisited by historians interested in understanding underlying value systems rather than specific decision-making. Recent rhetoric surrounding the Iraq war has reinforced the importance of looking at language to explain ideology. This history of elite mentalities is how we intend to approach the first seminar.

For discussion:

1.  How were concepts of 'freedom' and 'class' deployed in leadership rhetoric in Cold War America and Russia?

2.  Did American and Soviet ideologists manage to square the circle of being 'anti-imperial imperialists'?

3.  Are these gendered discourses?

Readings:

America

Ø  George Kennan, ‘The Long Telegram', 22 February 1946 (text on containment policy)

Ø  National Security Council, ‘NSC 68’, April 1950 (text, especially sections I-VII)

Ø  John F. Kennedy, 'The New Frontier', 15 July 1960 (text and live recording)

Ø  ExComm, ‘Cuban Missile crisis’, 18 October 1962 (live recording)
ExComm, 'Cuban Missile Crisis', 19 October 1962 (live recording)

Britain

Ø  Churchill, ‘Sinews of Peace’ (iron curtain speech), 5 March 1946 (text and live recording)

Soviet Union

Ø  'The Novikov Telegram', September 1946 (text)

Ø  Zhdanov, ‘Founding of the Cominform’ (two camps speech), Sept. 1947 (text)

Cultural International Relations

Ø  Appy, Christian G. (ed.), Cold War Constructions: The Political Culture of United States Imperialism (Massachusetts UP, 2000). E.812.5.A7

Ø  Beer, Francis A., and Hariman, Robert (eds.), Post-Realism: The Rhetorical Turn in International Relations (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1996). JE.1.P6

Ø  Costigliola, Frank, ‘“Unceasing Pressure for Penetration”: Gender, Pathology, and Emotion in George Kennan’s Formulation of the Cold War’, Journal of American History, 83 (1997), 1309-39.

Ø  ______, ‘The Nuclear Family: Tropes of Gender and Pathology in the Western Alliance’, Diplomatic History, 21 (1997), 163-83.

Ø  Dean, Robert D., ‘Masculinity as Ideology: John F. Kennedy and the Domestic Politics of Foreign Policy’, Diplomatic History, 22 (1998), 29-62.

Ø  ______, Imperial Brotherhood: Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001). E.812.5.D3

Ø  Hinds, Lynn Boyd and Windt, Theodore Otto, The Cold War as Rhetoric: The Beginnings, 1945-1950 (Praeger, 1991). JD.304.42.H4

Ø  Hopf, Ted, Social Construction of International Politics: Identities and Foreign Policies, Moscow, 1955 and 1999 (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2002), esp. ch. 3. JE.251.H6
Hunt, Michael, Ideology and US Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale UP, 1987). JE.242.H8

Ø  Medhurst, Martin J. et al., Cold War Rhetoric: Strategy, Metaphor and Ideology (Michigan State UP, 1997). E.183.8.R9

Ø  Rosenberg, Emily S., ‘“Foreign Affairs” after World War II: Connecting Sexual and International Politics’, Diplomatic History, 18 (1994), 59-70.

Ø  Westad, Odd Arne (ed.), Reviewing the Cold War : approaches, interpretations, theory (London: Frank Cass, 2000), esp. ch. 7. D.843.R3

Ø  ______, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: CUP, 2005)

Ø  Zubok, Vladislav and Constantin Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, Mass.: HUP, 1996). DK.63.3.Z8

Seminar 2: Taking Sides: Intellectuals and the Politics of High Culture

For discussion:

1.  Is Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four just an anti-communist text?

2.  How did intellectuals justify partisanship in the Cold War?

3.  Have we underestimated the influence that the state exerted on artistic and academic output?

Readings

Ø  Orwell, George, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). PR.6029.R9 (or try bookshop)

Ø  Koestler, Arthur et al., The God that Failed (1950). JB.2300.K6

Ø  Riha, T., Readings in Russian Civilisation, iii (Chicago & London, 1964), ch. 54: ‘The Party and the Arts (Zhdanov and Khrushchev), 683-98. DK.32.R4 (handout)

Ø  Saunders, Frances Stonor, Who Paid the Piper?: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London, 1999), chs. 4 & 16. E.812.5.S2 (handout)

Orwell

Ø  Bowker, Gordon, George Orwell (London: Abacus, 2004).PR.6029.R9

Ø  Hitchens, Christopher, Orwell's Victory (London: Penguin, 2003).PR.6029.R9

Ø  Lewis, Peter, George Orwell: The Road to 1984 (London: Heinemann, 1981).PR.6029.R9

Ø  Lucas, Scott, The Betrayal of Dissent: Beyond Orwell, Hitchens and the New American Century (London: Pluto, 2004). on order

Ø  Shaw, Tony, 'Some Writers Are More Equal then Others': George Orwell, the State and Cold War Privilege', in Rana Mitter and Patrick Major (eds), Across the Blocs: Cold War Cultural and Social History (London: Cass, 2004). DA.843.A2

Ø  Shelden, Michael, Orwell: The Authorised Biography (London: Heinemann, 1991). PR.6029.R9

Ø  West, W.J., The Larger Evils: Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Truth behind the Satire (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1992).PR.6029.R9

The Arts

Ø  Berghahn, Volker R., America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe (Princeton, 2001). E.183.7.B3

Ø  Caute, David, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy During the Cold War (Oxford: OUP, 2003). PM

Ø  Coleman, Peter, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe (New York: Free Press, 1989). PM

Ø  Hewison, Robert, In Anger: Culture in the Cold War (London: Methuen, 1988). PR.477.H3

Ø  Judt, Tony, Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals 1944-1956 (Berkeley: UCALP, 1992). DC.33.7.J8

Ø  Kramer, Hilton, The Twilight of the Intellectuals: Culture and Politics in the Era of the Cold War (Chicago: Dee, 1999). E.812.5.K7

Ø  Lewis, John, The Philosophy of Betrayal: An Analysis of the Anti-Soviet Propaganda of Arthur Koestler and Others (London, 1945). JD10.P6

Ø  Lindey, Christine, Art in the Cold War: From Vladivostok to Kalamazoo, 1945-1962 (London, 1990). PM

Ø  May, Lary (ed.), Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Cold War (Chicago, 1989). E.812.5.R3

Ø  Scott-Smith, Giles, The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA and Post-War American Hegemony (London and New York: Routledge, 2002). PM

Ø  Shaw, Tony, 'Some Writers are More Equal than Others', in Rana Mitter and Patrick Major (eds), Across the Blocs (London: Cass, 2003). PM

Ø  Swayze, Harold, Political Control of Literature in the USSR, 1946-1959 (Cambridge, Mass.: HUP, 1962). PG.3026.C3

Ø  White, Anne, De-Stalinisation and the House of Culture: Declining State Control over Leisure in the USSR, Poland and Hungary (London: Routledge, 1990). PM

Ø  Wilford, Hugh, The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War: Calling the Tune? (London: Cass, 2003). PM

Ø  Williams, Rhys (ed.), German Writers and the Cold War, 1945-1961 (Manchester: MUP, 1992). PT.405P6

Ø  Zhdanov, A., On Literature, Music and Philosophy (London, 1950). DK.268.Z35

Academia

Ø  Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). JB.2500.A7

Ø  Berlin, Isiah, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, pamJC.511.B3

Ø  Chomsky, Noam (ed.), The Cold War and the University: Toward an Intellectual History of the Postwar Years (New Press, 1997). PM

Ø  Connelly, John, Captive University: The Sovietization of East German, Czech and Polish Higher Education, 1945-1956 (University of North Carolina Press, 2000). 378.43/CON

Ø  Gollancz, Victor, Our Threatened Values (London, 1946), D.826.G6

Ø  Grienow-Hecht, Jessica C. E., ‘Shame on US? Academics, Cultural Transfer and the Cold War: A Critical Review’, Diplomatic History, 24 (2000), 465-94.

Ø  Engerman, David C. et al. (eds), Staging Growth: Modernization, Development, and the Global Cold War (Amherst & Boston, 2003). PM

Ø  Hayek, F. A., The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge, 1944). JB.2500.H2

Ø  Latham, Michael E., ‘Ideology, Social Science and Destiny: Modernization and the Kennedy-Era Alliance for Progress’, Diplomatic History, 22 (1998), 199-229.

Ø  ______, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and "Nation Building" in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill, 2000). PM

Ø  Marquis, Jefferson P., ‘The Other Warriors: American Social Science and Nation

Ø  Building in Vietnam’, Diplomatic History, 24 (2000), 79-105.

Ø  Popper, Karl, The Open Society and its Enemies (London: Routledge, 1945). JB.2500.P6

Ø  Robin, Ron, The Making of the Cold War Enemy: Culture and Politics in the Military-Intellectual Complex (Princeton, NJ: PUP, 2001). PM
Simpson, Christopher (ed.), Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences during the Cold War (New York, 1998). PM

Ø  Toynbee, Arnold J., Civilization on Trial (London: OUP, 1948). DA.27.T6

Seminar 3: Organisation Men and Apparatchiks: (Dys) Functional Elites, East and West

For discussion:

1.  Was there a ‘convergence’ between the functional elites of eastern and western societies?

2.  Were democratic state infrastructures more efficient than their communist counterparts?

Readings:

Core texts

Ø  Mandel, Ernest, Power and Money: A Marxist Theory of Bureaucracy (London: Verso, 1992), pp. 59-77, 83-93, 153-163, 171-176 & 186-188. JC.801.M2

Ø  Whyte, William H., The Organization Man (New York, 1956), part I. HC.5140.W4

Western Organisation Man

Ø  Burnham, James, The Managerial Revolution: What Is Happening in the World (New York: John Day, 1941). HN.320.B8

Ø  Gilison, Jerome M., British and Soviet Politics: Legitimacy and Convergence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1972). JC.32.G4

Ø  Lefort, Claude, The Political Forms of Modern Society: Bureaucracy, Democracy, Totalitarianism (Cambridge: Polity, 1986). JA.1.L3

Ø  Lens, Sidney, The Military-Industrial Complex (Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1970). JD.114.42.C2

Ø  Lutz, Catherine, ‘Epistemology of the Bunker: The Brainwashed and Other New Subjects of Permanent War’, in J. Pfister & N. Schnog (eds.), Inventing the Psychological (Yale, 1997), 245-67. [Mapping of cold war concerns onto psychological discourse, and role of latter in promoting former in turn] E.169.6.I6

Ø  Marcuse, Herbert, One-Dimensional Man (1964). [Theory of ‘repressive tolerance’ in late-industrial society.] JB.200.M2

Ø  Purcell, Carol W., The Military-Industrial Complex (New York: Harper & Row, 1972). JD.114.42.R8

Ø  Riesman, David, The Lonely Crowd (1950). QZ.589.73.R4

Ø  Roper, Michael, Masculinity and the British Organization Man since 1945 (Oxford: OUP, 1994). HC.5600.R6

Ø  Rose, Nikolas, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (London: Routledge, 1989). HC.5050.R6

Communist Functionaries

Ø  Bahro, Rudolf, The Alternative in Eastern Europe (London: Verso, 1981). JB.2334.1.B2

Ø  Djilas, Milovan, The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System (London: Thames & Hudson, 1957). JB.2300.D5

Ø  Hough, Jerry, The Soviet Prefects: The Local Party Organs in Industrial Decision-Making (Cambridge, Mass.: HUP, 1969). HN.5203.1.H6.

Ø  Rakovsky, Christian, ‘The Professional Dangers of Power’, in Tariq Ali (ed.), The Stalinist Legacy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), 47-59. JB.2351.S85

Ø  Voslenskii, Mikhail, Nomenklatura: Anatomy of the Soviet Ruling Class (London: Bodley Head, 1984). JD.302.51.V6

Seminar 4: Atomic Society: Science and the Bomb

In an era of nuclear nightmares, science was to occupy a central position within Cold War culture. This seminar explores the subject from two angles. First it examines the relationship between science and ideology: a fundamental dilemma for the scientists of the era. Science was supposed to be value free. But could scientists close their eyes to the inhumanity which could result from their research? Could scientists be above ideology and reach across the division of the blocs? Could science show the way beyond ideology and towards a more rational running of society? The second part of the seminar explores popular attitudes towards science in this era. Did members of the public see in bold scientific advances like nuclear technology something which they could admire as above ideology. Or did this period see a distancing of the public from science, as the latter withdrew into the secrecy of the military-industrial complex and became integrally associated with the threat of nuclear holocaust?

For discussion:

1.  Could science be value-free in the Cold War era?

2.  How did Cold War societies deal with nuclear fear?

Readings:

Core reading

Ø  Visvanathan, Shiv, ‘Atomic Physics: The Career of an Imagination’, in Ashis Nandy (ed.), Science, Hegemony and Violence: A Requiem for Modernity (OUP: Delhi, 1988), 113-66. Q.175.5.S2

Ø  Jones, Greta, Science, Politics and the Cold War(Routledge, 1988) [An excellent short account of the politicisation of science in the cold war. Pays particular attention to Britain. Utilises Modern Records Centre, Warwick: Association of Scientific Workers Papers; World Federation of Scientific Workers Papers.] PM