Cultural Exchange and the Cold War

Cultural Exchange and the Cold War PDF Author: Yale Richmond
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271031573
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
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.

Cultural Exchange and the Cold War

Cultural Exchange and the Cold War PDF Author: Yale Richmond
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271031573
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Ballet in the Cold War

Ballet in the Cold War PDF Author: Anne Searcy
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190945109
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
This book tells the full story of the earliest Soviet-American ballet exchanges, in which the governments of the USSR and the United States sent their most prestigious ballet companies on tours to the other country. Author Anne Searcy draws on Soviet- and American- archival sources and shows the spectacular misunderstandings that happened when audiences trained to view one type of ballet saw a very different style.

Soviet-American Relations, 1953-1960

Soviet-American Relations, 1953-1960 PDF Author: Victor Rosenberg
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476610606
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Dwight D. Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev presided over a pivotal period in Soviet-American relations. The ongoing Korean War and the lack of an American ambassador in Moscow illustrate the strain in Soviet-American relations at the start of Eisenhower's presidency, but things changed after Stalin died only 44 days later. Stalin's successors began to liberalize both domestic and foreign policy in what became known as the Thaw. There was an increase in diplomatic exchanges, including the first modern summit conferences. Of even greater importance, the Soviet leaders began to reestablish the scientific, cultural, and tourist contacts that had been broken under Stalin. Because political and ideological tensions remained and there were still restrictions on contacts, the Soviet overtures can best be described as a half-offered hand of friendship, and perhaps it was less of a thaw than the end of a blizzard. Nevertheless, these contacts began a process which would help end the Cold War three decades later. This history of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Eisenhower and Khrushchev administrations explores political, social and cultural exchanges, and assesses their impact upon the two countries. Besides diplomatic documents, memoirs from Americans and Soviets, and works of history, it relies upon eyewitness accounts by journalists, tourists and others to paint a detailed picture of the era. Notes are included for each chapter, and there is a bibliography and an index.

To See Paris and Die

To See Paris and Die PDF Author: Eleonory Gilburd
Publisher: Belknap Press
ISBN: 0674980719
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year Winner of the AATSEEL Prize for Best Book in Cultural Studies Winner of the Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies Winner of the Marshall D. Shulman Book Prize Winner of the Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize The Soviet Union was a notoriously closed society until Stalin’s death in 1953. Then, in the mid-1950s, a torrent of Western novels, films, and paintings invaded Soviet streets and homes, acquiring heightened emotional significance. To See Paris and Die is a history of this momentous opening to the West. At the heart of this history is a process of translation, in which Western figures took on Soviet roles: Pablo Picasso as a political rabble-rouser; Rockwell Kent as a quintessential American painter; Erich Maria Remarque and Ernest Hemingway as teachers of love and courage under fire; J. D. Salinger and Giuseppe De Santis as saviors from Soviet clichés. Imported novels challenged fundamental tenets of Soviet ethics, while modernist paintings tested deep-seated notions of culture. Western films were eroticized even before viewers took their seats. The drama of cultural exchange and translation encompassed discovery as well as loss. Eleonory Gilburd explores the pleasure, longing, humiliation, and anger that Soviet citizens felt as they found themselves in the midst of this cross-cultural encounter. The main protagonists of To See Paris and Die are small-town teachers daydreaming of faraway places, college students vicariously discovering a wider world, and factory engineers striving for self-improvement. They invested Western imports with political and personal significance, transforming foreign texts into intimate belongings. With the end of the Soviet Union, the Soviet West disappeared from the cultural map. Gilburd’s history reveals how domesticated Western imports defined the last three decades of the Soviet Union, as well as its death and afterlife.

Dance for Export

Dance for Export PDF Author: Naima Prevots
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819573361
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
At the height of the Cold War in 1954, President Eisenhower inaugurated a program of cultural exchange that sent American dancers and other artists to political "hot spots" overseas. This peacetime gambit by a warrior hero was a resounding success. Among the artists chosen for international duty were José Limón, who led his company on the first government-sponsored tour of South America; Martha Graham, whose famed ensemble crisscrossed southeast Asia; Alvin Ailey, whose company brought audiences to their feet throughout the South Pacific; and George Balanchine, whose New York City Ballet crowned its triumphant visits to Western Europe and Japan with an epoch-making tour of the Soviet Union in 1962. The success of Eisenhower's program of cultural export led directly to the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts and Washington's Kennedy Center. Naima Prevots draws on an array of previously unexamined sources, including formerly classified State Department documents, congressional committee hearings, and the minutes of the Dance Panel, to reveal the inner workings of "Eisenhower's Program," the complex set of political, fiscal, and artistic interests that shaped it, and the ever-uneasy relationship between government and the arts in the US. CONTRIBUTORS: Eric Foner.

The Sino-Soviet Alliance

The Sino-Soviet Alliance PDF Author: Austin Jersild
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469611600
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
In 1950 the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China signed a Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance to foster cultural and technological cooperation between the Soviet bloc and the PRC. While this treaty was intended as a break with the colonial past, Austin Jersild argues that the alliance ultimately failed because the enduring problem of Russian imperialism led to Chinese frustration with the Soviets. Jersild zeros in on the ground-level experiences of the socialist bloc advisers in China, who were involved in everything from the development of university curricula, the exploration for oil, and railway construction to piano lessons. Their goal was to reproduce a Chinese administrative elite in their own image that could serve as a valuable ally in the Soviet bloc's struggle against the United States. Interestingly, the USSR's allies in Central Europe were as frustrated by the "great power chauvinism" of the Soviet Union as was China. By exposing this aspect of the story, Jersild shows how the alliance, and finally the split, had a true international dimension.

Music, Art and Diplomacy: East-West Cultural Interactions and the Cold War

Music, Art and Diplomacy: East-West Cultural Interactions and the Cold War PDF Author: Simo Mikkonen
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317091752
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Music, Art and Diplomacy shows how a vibrant field of cultural exchange between East and West was taking place during the Cold War, which contrasts with the orthodox understanding of two divided and antithetical blocs. The series of case studies on cultural exchanges, focusing on the decades following the Second World War, cover episodes involving art, classical music, theatre, dance and film. Despite the fluctuating fortunes of diplomatic relations between East and West, there was a continuous circulation of cultural producers and products. Contributors explore the interaction of arts and politics, the role of the arts in diplomacy and the part the arts played in the development of the Cold War. Art has always shunned political borders, wavering between the guidance of individual and governmental patrons, and borderless expression. While this volume provides insight into how political players tried to harness the arts to serve their own political purposes, at the same time it is clear that the arts and artists exploited the Cold War framework to reach their own individual and professional objectives. Utilizing archives available only since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the volume provides a valuable socio-cultural approach to understanding the Cold War and cultural diplomacy.

Soft Power and Its Perils

Soft Power and Its Perils PDF Author: Takeshi Matsuda
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804700405
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
An examination of the cultural aspects of U.S.-Japan relations during the postwar Occupation and the early Cold War

The Cultural Cold War

The Cultural Cold War PDF Author: Frances Stonor Saunders
Publisher: New Press, The
ISBN: 1595589147
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
During the Cold War, freedom of expression was vaunted as liberal democracy’s most cherished possession—but such freedom was put in service of a hidden agenda. In The Cultural Cold War, Frances Stonor Saunders reveals the extraordinary efforts of a secret campaign in which some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom in the West were working for or subsidized by the CIA—whether they knew it or not. Called "the most comprehensive account yet of the [CIA’s] activities between 1947 and 1967" by the New York Times, the book presents shocking evidence of the CIA’s undercover program of cultural interventions in Western Europe and at home, drawing together declassified documents and exclusive interviews to expose the CIA’s astonishing campaign to deploy the likes of Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, Robert Lowell, George Orwell, and Jackson Pollock as weapons in the Cold War. Translated into ten languages, this classic work—now with a new preface by the author—is "a real contribution to popular understanding of the postwar period" (The Wall Street Journal), and its story of covert cultural efforts to win hearts and minds continues to be relevant today.

Dancers as Diplomats

Dancers as Diplomats PDF Author: Clare Croft
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199958211
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Clare Croft chronicles the role of dance and dancers in American cultural diplomacy, telling the story of how tours sponsored by the US State Department shaped and sometimes re-imagined ideas of America in unexpected, often sensational circumstances.