Cold War history

On 26 June 1954, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, a prominent and influential Indian film producer, director and screenwriter, dispatched a stinging letter to C. B. Rao, Deputy Secretary of India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Writing from his home in Bombay, Abbas lamented that efforts to export his latest film, Rahi (Wayfarer), to the Soviet Union, had turned into ‘a ‘rather tedious and unfortunate affair.’ The crux of Abbas’ disaffection with the Government of India centred on its interaction with N. P. Koulebiakin. An Indologist and professor of Sanskrit, Koulebiakin had arrived in the subcontinent at the beginning of 1953 to manage the Indian arm of Sovexportfilm, the official Soviet agency dealing with the import and export of films. Koulebiakin’s efforts to enlist the support of the Government of India in promoting Russian cinematic exchange with India had met with a series of setbacks, frustrations and misunderstandings. Ultimately, however, with Abbas’ assistance, Koulebiakin used the Rahi affair to establish a modus operandi between Sovexportfilm and the Indian government that served as the model for Indo-Soviet Cold War film collaboration.

This book, based on a PhD thesis at Tübingen University, investigates  Greece's Western and European policies after World War II  and until the signing of the Association Agreement with the EEC, the first step towards future full EC-membership. Based upon voluminous archival material from various countries, organizations and political figures, the book links the prompt orientation of the country towards the West under the pressure of the Civil war (1946-1949) and beyond, under the impact of the Cold War, with the intensive political and economic transformation at home. Us influence played a major role in economic modernization and the gradual build-up of a two-party system that challenged traditional ways and promised to marginalize communist and neutralist ideas that were easily reactivated by domestic and foreign policy crises, notably the Cyprus issue. Europeanization as another path to modernization came into the picture in the mid-1950s, when the European Communities took up a specific form and Greece  had to choose between the closer union of the Six and the lax cooperation of the Seven (EFTA). International events and domestic considerations led Athens to opt for the former, a decision that produced, as it turned out, irreversible commitments of the Greek economy and state towards integration policies. An important aspect of the study is the balance between US protection and EEC commitments at an era of Euro-Atlantic discord (JFK- Ch. De Gaulle) and, as a result, the capabilities of small countries in the Cold War to multiply their impact by linking modernization and democratization to geostrategic advantages.

This essay examines the role of the Greek Crown in American policies towards Greece in the turbulent 1960s. Contrary to the established idea that the King, US diplomacy and the Greek army co-shaped Greek politics  on the basis of shared interests throughout the 1950s and 1960s, this paper shows major differences in military matters, foreign policy and political modernization. Relations were often troubled by embarrassing initiatives  in the early 1950s, a pattern that recurred at the peak of the political crisis over the Cyprus Question and the consequent domestic destabilization after G. Papandreou’s resignation from power in the mid-1960s.

This article examines the various aspects of the US-French clash over NATO' s nuclear power in the early 1960s and its repercussions on allied unity and European integration. Based on a rich internatioal bibliography, it presents the national schools of thought on the issue, especially those of  the USA, France and Britain, but also Germany and smaller states that would hav to adapt to an MLF and generally to JFK's Grand Design..

In den Jahren nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg verstärkte sich in den USA die Wahrnehmung, dass Jugenddelinquenz ein äußerst gravierendes Problem darstellte und die Gesellschaft in ihren Grundfesten gefährdete. Nina Mackert untersucht die Ausmaße dieser »Delinquency Scare« und zeigt, wie sie weit über Sorgen um Jugendliche hinausging und die soziale Ordnung in den USA mitgestaltete. Zu ihren Auswirkungen gehörten Veränderungen im Jugendstrafsystem, in der Sozialarbeit sowie in Schul- und Familienpolitik. Die Beschäftigung mit Delinquenz war Teil von Auseinandersetzungen um gesellschaftliche Hierarchien, um Bürgerrechte, gesellschaftliche Teilhabe und Anerkennung. Die Autorin kann insbesondere zeigen, wie während der »Delinquency Scare« gerade Erwachsene für eine scheinbar in Unwucht geratene soziale Ordnung verantwortlich gemacht wurden.

This essay presents European integration and the shaping of the welfare state in postwar Europe as two inseparable projects. It links both processes with the growing influence of federal ideas and Christian-democratic values since the Second World War, when European integration and democratization irrigated the political visions of anti-totalitarian forces across the political spectrum. The specific characteristics of the liberal, market-oriented welfare state that marked postwar Europe is examined in connection with the political ideas of centre-right forces that became leading historical agents of democratization and integration policies in the 1950s.

This bog entry establishes a link between Melanesian "Cargo Cults" and export processing zones and special economic zones. A second important concern is to show how timing works in anthropology, and how it could work much better if capitalism, rather than subsidiary phenomena such as neoliberalism, are of central conner.

The article is  written in Bulgarian – In: History, Mythology, Politics. Political Mythology and History. Koleva, D., Grozev, K. (Eds), Gutenberg Publishers Sofia University Publishers., Sofia, 2010, pp.320-334, also available at: http://lib.sudigital.org/record/18827 .(In Bulgarian)