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

U.S.-Soviet Cultural Exchanges, 1958-1986 PDF Author: Yale Richmond
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000008827
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
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

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

U.S.-Soviet Cultural Exchanges, 1958-1986 PDF Author: Yale Richmond
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000008827
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
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
ISBN: 9780271046679
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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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.

Soviet Americana

Soviet Americana PDF Author: Sergei Zhuk
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 178673303X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
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.

Nikolai Bolkhovitinov and American Studies in the USSR

Nikolai Bolkhovitinov and American Studies in the USSR PDF Author: Sergei I. Zhuk
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498551254
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
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.

Cinema in the Cold War

Cinema in the Cold War PDF Author: Cyril Buffet
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317358791
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
The film industry was an important propaganda element during the Cold War. As with other conflicts, the Cold War was fought not just with weapons, but with words and images. Throughout the conflict, cinema was a reflection of the societies, the ideologies, and the political climates in which the films were produced. On both sides, great stars, major companies, famous scriptwriters, and filmmakers were enlisted to help the propaganda effort. It was not only propaganda that was created by the cinema of the Cold War – it also articulated criticism, and the movie industries were centres of the fabrication of modern myths. The cinema was undoubtedly a place of Cold War confrontation and rivalry, and yet there were aesthetic, technical, narrative exchanges between West and East. All genres of film contributed to the Cold War: thrillers, westerns, comedies, musicals, espionage films, documentaries, cartoons, science fiction, historical dramas, war films, and many more. These films shaped popular culture and national identities, creating vivid characters like James Bond, Alec Leamas, Harry Palmer, and Rambo. While the United States and the Soviet Union were the two main protagonists in this on-screen duel, other countries, such as Britain, Germany, Poland, Italy, and Czechoslovakia, also played crucially important parts, and their prominent cinematographic contributions to the Cold War are all covered in this volume. This book was originally published as a special issue of Cold War History.

American–Soviet Cultural Diplomacy

American–Soviet Cultural Diplomacy PDF Author: Cadra Peterson McDaniel
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739199315
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
American–Soviet Cultural Diplomacy: The Bolshoi Ballet’s American Premiere is the first full-length examination of a Soviet cultural diplomatic effort. Following the signing of an American-Soviet cultural exchange agreement in the late 1950s, Soviet officials resolved to utilize the Bolshoi Ballet’s planned 1959 American tour to awe audiences with Soviet choreographers’ great accomplishments and Soviet performers’ superb abilities. Relying on extensive research, Cadra Peterson McDaniel examines whether the objectives behind Soviet cultural exchange and the specific aims of the Bolshoi Ballet’s 1959 American tour provided evidence of a thaw in American-Soviet relations. Interwoven throughout this study is an examination of the Soviets’ competing efforts to create ballets encapsulating Communist ideas while simultaneously reinterpreting pre-revolutionary ballets so that these works were ideologically acceptable. McDaniel investigates the rationale behind the creation of the Bolshoi’s repertoire and the Soviet leadership’s objectives and interpretation of the tour’s success as well as American response to the tour. The repertoire included the four ballets, Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake, Giselle, and The Stone Flower, and two Highlights Programs, which included excerpts from various pre- and post-revolutionary ballets, operas, and dance suites. How the Americans and the Soviets understood the Bolshoi’s success provides insight into how each side conceptualized the role of the arts in society and in political transformation. American–Soviet Cultural Diplomacy: The Bolshoi Ballet’s American Premiere demonstrates the ballet’s role in Soviet foreign policy, a shift to "artful warfare," and thus emphasizes the significance of studying cultural exchange as a key aspect of Soviet foreign policy and analyzes the continued importance of the arts in twenty-first century Russian politics.

Searching for a Cultural Diplomacy

Searching for a Cultural Diplomacy PDF Author: Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781845459949
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Recent studies on the meaning of cultural diplomacy in the twentieth century often focus on the United States and the Cold War, based on the premise that cultural diplomacy was a key instrument of foreign policy in the nation’s effort to contain the Soviet Union. As a result, the term “cultural diplomacy” has become one-dimensional, linked to political manipulation and subordination and relegated to the margin of diplomatic interactions. This volume explores the significance of cultural diplomacy in regions other than the United States or “western” countries, that is, regions that have been neglected by scholars so far—Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. By examining cultural diplomacy in these regions, the contributors show that the function of information and exchange programs differs considerably from area to area depending on historical circumstances and, even more importantly, on the cultural mindsets of the individuals involved.

U.S. International Exhibitions during the Cold War

U.S. International Exhibitions during the Cold War PDF Author: Andrew James Wulf
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 144224643X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
Although cultural diplomacy has become an increasingly fashionable term embraced by academics, foreign-service personnel, and private sector commercial and cultural interests, the very practice of this idea remains conspicuously challenging to define. This book takes on this problem, advancing a new understanding of cultural diplomacy that results from a historical investigation of a single area of government and private sector partnership, and what became in the mid-twentieth century the most prominent manifestation of this alliance—the cultural exhibitions sent abroad to “tell America’s story” with the goal of “winning hearts and minds.” To illustrate this point, selected exhibitions and the intentions of the policymakers who proposed them are interrogated for the first time beside archival documentation, writings from the history of design, advertising, science, as well as art historical and museum studies theories that address various aspects of the history of collecting and display, all of which explore the reality of how these exhibitions were conceived and prepared for foreign audiences. Most importantly, personal interviews with the designers and government representatives responsible for the ultimate appearance of these events upturn preconceived notions of how these events came to be. Seventy-five photographs from the exhibits make this history come alive. Through this discussion these questions are answered: What was America showing of itself through these exhibitions? And, more urgently, what do these exhibitions tell us about U.S. interest in verisimilitude? This investigation spans the crucial years of American exhibitions abroad (1955-1975), beginning with the formation of an official system of exhibiting American commercial wares and political ideas at trade fairs, through official exchanges with the U.S.S.R., to pavilions at world's fairs, and finally to museum exhibitions that signaled a return to the display of founding American values. They are thus complex ideological symbols in which concepts of national identity, globalization, technology, consumerism, design, and image management both coincided and clashed. The investigation of these exhibitions enhances the understanding of a significant chapter of U.S. cultural diplomacy at the height of the Cold War and how America constantly reimagined itself.

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.

The KGB, Russian Academic Imperialism, Ukraine, and Western Academia, 1946–2024

The KGB, Russian Academic Imperialism, Ukraine, and Western Academia, 1946–2024 PDF Author: Sergei I. Zhuk
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1666943681
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
The KGB, Russian Academic Imperialism, Ukraine, and Western Academia, 1946-2024 is a study of Soviet and Russian intelligence operations against the centers for Soviet studies in North American academia. Using recently opened archival KGB and US intelligence documents, memoirs, and personal interviews with former KGB officers in post-Soviet Ukraine, this book analyzes the Soviet strategy of "using their enemies" for promoting their own political interests, especially directed at the problems of Ukrainian nationalism and independence. This volume investigates KGB operations establishing a foothold within the American Slavic studies community during the Cold War. The KGB, and their current successors the Russian FSB, use Russian emigrants and academics to promote pro-Kremlin and pro-Putin myths within North American research institutes. Special attention is paid to the historical roots of contemporary Russian intelligence operations targeting American-Russian academics and promoting Russian state interests in the ongoing war against Ukraine.