U.S.-Soviet Cultural Exchanges, 1958-1986

U.S.-Soviet Cultural Exchanges, 1958-1986 PDF

Author: Yale Richmond

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-06-04

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 1000008827

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The U.S.-USSR Cultural Agreement signed at the Geneva summit in 1985 signalled the resumption of a broad range of cultural exchanges suspended in 1980 after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Mr. Richmond describes the history of the various areas of exchange—in the performing arts, popular media, academia, public diplomacy, science and technology

Cultural Exchange and the Cold War

Cultural Exchange and the Cold War PDF

Author: Yale Richmond

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2007-08-09

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780271046679

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Some fifty thousand Soviets visited the United States under various exchange programs between 1958 and 1988. They came as scholars and students, scientists and engineers, writers and journalists, government and party officials, musicians, dancers, and athletes—and among them were more than a few KGB officers. They came, they saw, they were conquered, and the Soviet Union would never again be the same. Cultural Exchange and the Cold War describes how these exchange programs (which brought an even larger number of Americans to the Soviet Union) raised the Iron Curtain and fostered changes that prepared the way for Gorbachev's glasnost, perestroika, and the end of the Cold War. This study is based upon interviews with Russian and American participants as well as the personal experiences of the author and others who were involved in or administered such exchanges. Cultural Exchange and the Cold War demonstrates that the best policy to pursue with countries we disagree with is not isolation but engagement.

Nikolai Bolkhovitinov and American Studies in the USSR

Nikolai Bolkhovitinov and American Studies in the USSR PDF

Author: Sergei I. Zhuk

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2020-07-06

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1498551254

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This study is an intellectual biography of Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov (1930–2008), the prominent Soviet historian who was a pioneering scholar of US history and US–Russian relations. Alongside the personal history of Bolkhovitinov, this study also examines the broader social, cultural, and intellectual developments within the Americanist scholarly community in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. Using archival documents, numerous studies by Russian and Ukrainian Americanists, various periodicals, personal correspondence, diaries, and more than one hundred interviews, it demonstrates how concepts, genealogies, and images of modernity shaped a national self-perception of the intellectual elites in both nations during the Cold War.

Soviet Americana

Soviet Americana PDF

Author: Sergei Zhuk

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-01-08

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 178673303X

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The Americanist community played a vital role in the Cold War, as well as in large part directing the cultural consumption of Soviet society and shaping perceptions of the US. To shed light onto this important, yet under-studied, academic community, Sergei Zhuk here explores the personal histories of prominent Soviet Americanists, considering the myriad cultural influences - from John Wayne's bravado in the film Stagecoach to Miles Davis - that shaped their identities, careers and academic interests. Zhuk's compelling account draws on a wide range of understudied archival documents, periodicals, letters and diaries as well as more than 100 exclusive interviews with prominent Americanists to take the reader from the post-war origins of American studies, via the extremes of the Cold War, thaw and perestroika, to Putin's Russia. Soviet Americana is a comprehensive insight into shifting attitudes towards the US throughout the twentieth century and an essential resource for all Soviet and Cold War historians.

Know Your Enemy

Know Your Enemy PDF

Author: David C. Engerman

Publisher: OUP USA

Published: 2009-11-20

Total Pages: 472

ISBN-13: 0195324862

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"As World War II Ended, few Americans in government or academia knew much about the Soviet Union. It was, as Winston Churchill had famously noted, "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." To address this dangerous gap in knowledge, as David C. Engerman shows in this book, a network of scholars, soldiers, spies, and philanthropists created an enterprise known as Soviet Studies." "Bringing together iconoclasts, geniuses, lone wolves, and careerists to analyze an entire nation and its ruling ideas, Soviet Studies attracted great minds from the left, right, and center. Among them are controversial individuals ranging from George Kennan to Margaret Mead to Zbigniew Brzezinski, not to mention historians Sheila Fitzpatrick and Richard Pipes.Together they created the knowledge that helped fight the Cold War and define Cold War thought. Ranging from the end of World War II to the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Know Your Enemy shows that Soviet Studies became a vibrant intellectual enterprise, studying not just the Soviet threat, but Soviet society and culture, as well as Russian history and literature." --Book Jacket.

Russia and the Idea of the West

Russia and the Idea of the West PDF

Author: Robert English

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2000-10-25

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 0231504748

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An intriguing "intellectual portrait" of a generation of Soviet reformers, this book is also a fascinating case study of how ideas can change the course of history. In most analyses of the Cold War's end the ideological aspects of Gorbachev's "new thinking" are treated largely as incidental to the broader considerations of power—as gloss on what was essentially a retreat forced by crisis and decline. Robert English makes a major contribution by demonstrating that Gorbachev's foreign policy was in fact the result of an intellectual revolution. English analyzes the rise of a liberal policy-academic elite and its impact on the Cold War's end. English worked in the archives of the USSR Foreign Ministry and also gained access to the restricted collections of leading foreign-policy institutes. He also conducted nearly 400 interviews with Soviet intellectuals and policy makers—from Khrushchev- and Brezhnev-era Politburo members to Perestroika-era notables such as Eduard Shevardnadze and Gorbachev himself. English traces the rise of a "Westernizing" worldview from the post-Stalin years, through a group of liberals in the late1960s–70s, to a circle of close advisers who spurred Gorbachev's most radical reforms.