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During the 20th century, authoritarian regimes willingly embraced sport as a vivid arena for demonstrating their superiority. Prior research on postage stamps issued by such regimes revealed certain patterns associated with periods of aggressive internal and external rhetoric, whereby postage stamps served as a channel for government propaganda. In the current study, we looked at sports, military, and national identity stamps. Applying the social-semiotic method, we first examined the messages sports stamps have conveyed in Soviet Union and Russia. Then, the quantitative paradigm was employed to evaluate the trends in the issuance of propagandistic stamps by post-WW2 USSR and Russia. Finally, we expanded the scope by looking at stamp issuance in Germany, Italy, and USSR in pre-WW2 and WW2 years. This heavily militaristic “landscape” was used mainly as a basis for comparison with the issuance policy of Putin’s Russia. The results shed light on some striking similarities across the different countries and periods. These findings are discussed in the context of the recent geopolitical situation.

In recent years, researchers of far-right radicalism have shown interest in the contribution of radical conservatives to the modern theory of international relations. This study focuses on the ideas of the German intellectual movement of the New Right in the FRG in relation to the challenges of world politics. The aim of the study is to analyze the evolution of the political language of the movement’s representatives according to two stages: the Cold War phase of the second half of the 20th century; and the modern stage of development from 2013 to the present. The methodological basis of the paper is the analysis of political texts within the framework of the Cambridge School of the History of Ideas. This method allows us to identify the political problems and opponents of the New Right, to reproduce the political contexts in which the theorists acted, and to identify the cultural resources of the ideologues’ political language. The findings of the study illustrate that the main challenge of the New Right throughout its existence is to ensure national security and increase the political power of the Federal Republic of Germany. The fulfillment of this goal required the development of a foreign policy concept that would ensure the dominance of the FRG in Continental Europe. Despite the fact that the intellectual sources of the ideology of the New Right were not directly related to the theory of international relations, the theses of the theorists are closest to the school of political realism. At the same time, the pro-European ideological positions of the New Right appear to be constrained and, as a consequence, irrelevant among right-wing populists of Europe and the United States. This conclusion allows us to reject the assertion that the goal of the New Right is to revolutionize the existing system of international relations.

Societal Impact Statement Multiple cropping, the cultivation of several crops on the same land in a year, occupied an important part of Taiwan's agricultural research from 1950 to 1970. This research originated in the context of Taiwan's land reform and diversification programs and their connections to the government's political ambition to maximize food production. The study of how multiple cropping was politicized and depoliticized by different actors helps to expand the narratives of the Green Revolution in Asia, analyze their legacies, and highlight Taiwan's role in the international exchange of visions of agricultural development during the Cold War. Summary Scholars have recently expanded the history of the Green Revolution to move beyond the narrative of North–South technological diffusion. This article enriches the scholarship with the case of multiple cropping in Taiwan and its connection to Cold War geopolitics. Rice productivity in postwar Taiwan was boosted through a land reform launched by the Sino‐American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR) in the 1950s. Backed by American aid and staffed by scientists from the Republic of China (ROC) government, the JCRR envisioned to turn tenant farmers into landowners so as to encourage labor input and adoption of seeds and fertilizers. By 1960, the JCRR presented its reform as a “bloodless social revolution” and extended its focus to multiple cropping through a diversification program. The JCRR further created the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC) in 1971 to spread Taiwan's breeding and cropping techniques. The ROC's diplomatic isolation in the 1970s, however, prompted the center to reinterpret Taiwan's success in multiple cropping from a political achievement to a technological triumph, thus reinforcing the technology‐driven narrative used by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). Through Taiwan's influences on IRRI's rice breeding and multiple cropping research, this paper illustrates that the history of the Green Revolution requires more complex narratives. In addition, with Taiwan's political and economic transition since the 1980s, farmers began to reclaim their voice and influence agricultural policies. The case thus highlights the need of democratic participation in agricultural research, a concern that remains relevant today.

The factors contributing to the strategic significance of a port can be comprehended by assessing its military, political, and economic capabilities. Accordingly, this study aims to determine and examine the strategic significance of Iskenderun port and its benefits to the Turkish Navy. To systematically comprehend and impartially assess the benefits and strategic significance of the port, other naval powers in the region are also examined. Based on an analysis of historical documents and secondary sources, argued this study that the Iskenderun port has the potential to act as a deterrent and give the Turkish Navy a psychological advantage in terms of controlling the sea and intervening in events in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Iskenderun Bay’s’ geographical advantages pose significant challenges for potential threats against the Turkish Navy and hinder the intelligence collecting efforts of hostile groups. It is important to emphasizes that Iskenderun port will allow for the ability to intervene in incidents using a reduced military presence inwith the context of force projection.

This paper reconstructs the stages and personalities that contributed, in Italy during the 1980s, to the birth and activity of the Archivio Disarmo, a documentation and information center on peace and security. The originality of this experience consists in a form of “pacifism of reason”, based on scientific research and the dissemination and communication of the results of the studies carried out to the citizenry through various symbolic public initiatives. In this sense, the Archivio Disarmo has contributed to influencing the mindset and raising public opinion, spreading a culture of peace in the age of the end of the Cold War.

In addition to the massive arms race, the Cold War was psychological in winning over and attracting foreign individuals, groups, and governments. This study analyzes the very important role of cultural diplomacy in the Cold War, a period marked by intense geopolitical tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. Taking into account the catastrophic consequences of a possible direct military conflict between the two superpowers, cultural diplomacy and the concept of projecting soft power to achieve national interests was of crucial importance. Focusing on the interplay between the two superpowers, this study analyzes the mechanisms and influence of cultural diplomacy on international relations during the Cold War. Moreover, it analyzes the approach of the United States and the Soviet Union to this concept and provides insight into the key strategic differences in the use of cultural diplomacy in foreign policy of the period.

After World War II, the situation in Indochina had complicated changes. Japan surrendered to the allies and the situation was favorable for the French army to return to Indochina to continue its colonial rule as before 1945. That sparked a war, mainly between Vietnam (the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and the French colonialists. The war took place across the entire Indochina peninsula and was one of the hot spots of the cold war. Since 1950, Vietnam received support from the Soviet Union and China. The war with greater advantages gradually tilted towards Vietnam. In 1954, despite receiving great support from the United States, the French army still failed at Dien Bien Phu. This led to a military and political settlement at the Geneva conference. During this conference, the plans and plots of major countries fully reflected the complexity that the Cold War brought. The fate of small and weak countries was not taken seriously, which resulted in persistent conflicts, sparking the next large-scale war in Vietnam and the entire Indochina peninsula from 1961 to 1975.

AbstractThis essay aims to offer a new perspective on the world wars of the twentieth century and its international systems. In this context I argue that the bipolar system, in contrast to its predecessors, was not ended by a world war because this very system – or more precisely, the mode of operation derived from it, namely the Cold War – was in itself a world war. In this sense it differs from the two preceding international systems. In order to confirm this hypothesis, I will first survey the three international systems with which we are familiar from twentieth-century history, including their characteristics and legacies. I will then examine the familiar definitions of war in political- historical scholarship, propose a definition of the term ‘world war’ and finally attempt to demonstrate that the Cold War indeed falls into this category.

The Vienna follow-up meeting achieved an unprecedented breakthrough for the human dimension of the CSCE. This article explores this success by analysing three different levels: governments, delegations, and non-governmental players. Each government and its relationship with other nations formed the basis for the positions taken by its delegation. Nonetheless, the outcome of the meeting depended heavily on the negotiation skills of the diplomats. Hence, the delegates were at the centre of the negotiation process and were crucial to the understanding of the success of the meeting. External factors, in particular human rights organizations, although not allowed to take part in the negotiations, contributed to the process. This article argues that only by taking all three into consideration can the success be fully understood.

In 1946, Madrid became home to a Catholic university residence, the colegio mayor Santiago Apóstol, which catered specifically to refugee students from Eastern Europe who had fled the aftermath of the Second World War and the creation of Communist regimes in their home countries. This residence hall, which housed about 800 students from 20 nationalities between its opening in the postwar era and its rededication in 1969, was part of the anticommunist governmental strategy to overcome the political isolation that Francoist Spain found itself in. It was also part of the efforts of the Catholic church to support refugees from Eastern Europe in the early Cold War. This article aims to bring these strands together, focusing on the founding of the residence hall as a Catholic and governmental endeavor. In a second step, the article focuses on the residence hall itself, considering the agency of the residence’s officials and its students, and contemplating the residence’s academic and exile networks both in Spain and internationally.

Historiography has recently shown a special interest in assessing the cultural impact of the social engagement of academics during the Cold War through their advocacy of disarmament or human rights. This academic social activism became part of a complex “transnational civil society,” which was to influence international relations. In light of these considerations, this article aims to delve into the distinctive characteristics of the “nuclear culture” and “science diplomacy” of the Spanish academic world between 1981 and 1986. Spain’s experience of the final stage of the Cold War was somewhat unusual. The resurgence of nuclear tension between the two superpowers was mediated by the domestic political transition from a military dictatorship to a parliamentary democracy, but also by the democratisation of foreign policy and the accession of Spain to NATO. To understand how this took place and with what effects, this article will focus on three main points. Firstly, it will set out an analysis of the impact of historian E.P. Thompson’s critical thinking on the Cold War and the European Campaign for Disarmament among Spanish academics. Secondly, it will examine how certain academics, who played an active part in the debate either for or against joining and remaining in NATO, shaped the nuclear culture of the time through the daily press. Finally, it will argue the involvement, or lack thereof, of Spain’s scientific sector in transnational networks for peace and disarmament and how, through civil society itself, the foundations were laid for the first centres aimed at the dissemination and study of peace.

This article examines the issue of international cooperation on the platform of selected international organizations during the late Stalin era at the beginning of the Cold War, approximately between 1947 and 1953. A number of historians such as Kaplan and Prucha in their monographs highlight the flows of information, capital and technology solely within the Eastern Bloc, but as the newly accessible UN archives in Geneva reveal, even the period of Stalin's strongly authoritarian rule was characterized by hitherto under-appreciated cross-Curtain ties instrumental in forging diplomatic dialogue, trade and scientific-technical cooperation. The present article analyses these ties on the platform of selected international organizations, namely the UN Economic Commission for Europe and the International Monetary Fund. The selection of these organizations was not arbitrary. Preliminary research of their archival material has outlined their crucial role in the formation of inter-bloc dialogue at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s. The present paper devotes particular attention to the role of Czechoslovakia and its delegates on the above-mentioned platforms. It turns out that it was Czechoslovakia that was able to emerge as an actor mediating and proactively shaping East-West dialogue and different cooperation projects. Although this Central European state was part of the Eastern Bloc, the strong traditional ties of Czechoslovak diplomacy and economy to Western Europe were not completely deconstructed at the beginning of the Cold War, thus enabling Czechoslovakia to become an imaginary bridge between the two halves of the Iron Curtain.

This paper examines the enduring influence of the Political West, a power structure that emerged during the Cold War era and continues to shape international relations nowadays. Contrary to expectations of its dissolution following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Political West expanded its influence, propelled by a belief in the ideological superiority of liberal democracy. This expansion, fuelled by notions of the “end of history,” has led to the perpetuation of Cold War dynamics, characterised by adversarial relations and ideological conflicts. The study contrasts the expectations of a post-Cold War era of positive peace with the reality of continued antagonism, exemplified by conflicts such as the Balkan wars and NATO’s interventions in Iraq and Libya. The exacerbation of tensions culminated in the onset of Cold War II in 2014, marked by proxy conflicts and, notably, the Ukrainian crisis of 2022. In response to the assertiveness of the Western political bloc, an alternative alignment led by Russia and China has emerged, challenging the unilateral dominance of Western powers. This Political East, while embodying anti-hegemonic sentiments, maintains a conservative stance within the framework of the international Charter system. The paper concludes by highlighting the fundamental transformation of international politics into a multipolar landscape. Although both the Political West and East continue to espouse the principles of the Charter, the intensification of hostilities risks destabilising the international order. In the context of the enduring Cold War dynamics and the challenges posed by global environmental change, the future of humanity is increasingly uncertain.

Bolşevizm’den Kurtarma Amerikan Komitesi tarafından “desteklenen” Sovyetler Birliğini Öğrenme Enstitüsü, 8 Temmuz 1950 tarihinde Almanya’nın Münih kentinde kurulmuştur. Enstitü, Sovyetler Birliği’ni terk eden ve Sovyetler Birliği ile ilgili ilmi tetkiklerde bulunanların buluştuğu bir mecradır. Enstitü bünyesinde Türkçe dergi dışında İngilizce olarak Bulletin ve Studies on the Soviet Union, Almanca Sowjetstudien, Fransızca Arapça olarak da Mecelle dergileri yayınlanmıştır. Bunun haricinde Fransızca ve İspanyolca dillerinde de yayınlar yapılmıştır. Neşriyatın yanı sıra konferanslar, sempozyumlar ve kongreler düzenlenmiştir. Mustafa Edige Kırımal’ın sorumlu müdürlüğünü yaptığı Dergi’de Sovyetler Birliği’ni ilgilendiren mevzuu dışında herhangi başka bir noktaya temas edilmemiştir. Dergi, kendini Sovyetler Birliği’ni öğrenmeye, tetkik, tahlil etmeye hasretmiştir. Ana tema Sovyetlerde yaşayan Türklerin problemleri olmakla birlikte Sovyet ekonomisi, sanayisi, tarımı ve dış politikasını mütalaa eden metinlerin sayısı hayli fazla olduğu vakidir. Bu çalışmada sadece dergide yer alan yazılarla sınırlı kalınmayacaktır. Ancak Dergi’nin bu husustaki yazıları ilham vermesi açısından önemlidir. Çalışmada, Soğuk Savaş’ın henüz başları sayılabilecek yıllarda Türkçülük ve antikomünist yana düşen duyguyla Sovyetleri belli başlı konular etrafında öğrenmeye azmedenlerin kurduğu yayının tam ismi ‘Sovyetler Birliği Öğrenme Enstitüsü Dergi’de sürgit zikredilen Sovyetlerin milliyet siyasetini mercek altına alınacaktır. Çalışmanın amacı Dergi’deki yazılar etrafında Türkçü antikomünistlerin görüşünü ortaya koymaktır. Dergi’deki yazılar ile birlikte muhtelif çalışmalar da kaynakçaya dahil edilmiştir. Çalışmanın kapsamı Sovyetler Birliği’nin erken dönem milliyet siyaseti ile sınırlandırılmıştır.

This article studies the Psychological Action developed by the Argentine dictatorship at the international level between 1979 and 1981. It analyzes the dissemination policy executed by the General Directorate of Press and Diffusion of the Foreign Ministry, specifically, the “fight against subversion” narrative in the bibliographic and audiovisual dissemination materials. We identify the central axes and the objectives in which it is inserted, by linking the material with the foreign policy of the dictatorship in the regional context that opened in 1979.

A vivid illustration of the successes of U.S.–Soviet diplomacy during the period of allied relations was the magazine Amerika, published in the United States in Russian and distributed in the USSR. The magazine was intended to inform Soviet citizens about real American life, familiarize them with the achievements of the United States in science and culture. It was important to present American literature on the pages of the magazine: authors new to Soviet readers and stories by well-known writers translated into Russian for the first time. The article concludes that, along with the rest of the magazine's content, its literary section sought to demonstrate American prosperity and emphasize the closeness of American and Russian cultures. After the war, however, relations between the two countries went into decline again. The USSR continued to translate, censor, and distribute Amerika, but at the same time launched a campaign against the magazine in the Soviet press. In 1952, the symbol of US — Soviet alliance of 1941–1945 ceased to exist. The canceled project was restarted however four years later. The history of the magazine is reconstructed on the basis of Soviet press and archival materials, including transcripts of conversations, Agitprop reports, correspondence between the U.S. Ambassador to the USSR W.A. Harriman and V.M. Molotov, the First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR A.A. Gromyko and the U.S. Charge d'Affaires in the USSR W. Barbour.

Drawing on an evocative letter her grandfather wrote her in the mid-1950s, the Author dwells on the dangers of a looming new Cold War, which makes Calamandrei’s concerns in the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing, as well as his vote against the Atlantic Pact in the Italian Chamber of Deputies in 1949, highly topical. Despite his isolation, he strenuously defended a position of neutrality and weaved a dialogue, a network of communication among peoples, fostering their interdependence. His journeys to Mexico and particularly to China – a source of several publications on the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Italy and the People’s Republic of China – fairly witness it.

This article explores Mexico’s overlooked importance in the Central American armed conflict, the limits of its influence, and its connection to the late Cold War. Mexico’s policy toward Central America attempted to prevent an American and Cuban military intervention in the area and avoid a Cold War confrontation along its southern border. Mexico attempted to build detente in the region and prevent a global escalation of tension between the great powers. Meanwhile, it sought to propose a “third way” for the revolutionary actors shaped after Mexico’s political system and history. Studying Mexico’s efforts to create detente-like arrangements can shed light on the efforts of peripheral actors and their projects to influence the international system despite the actions of hegemonic powers.

The purpose of the article is to analyze why Huntingtonâs ideas about civilizations, which have been much criticized, misused, and abused, continue to show amazing vitality by tackling the trends of international order. His paradigm has been a good predictor of international conflicts, but at the same time a tool that allows us to accept some primordial things. Properly understood and applied, civilizational analysis, which considers oneâs strengths and weaknesses, can be used, like geopolitical analysis, as an indispensable component of planning a strategic approach.

In a pilot project for the future Bantustan capital of Siyabuswa, the South African apartheid-era state funded the research and construction of fifty-nine core houses from 1977 to 1978 before throttling the full scheme. Designed within the National Building Research Institute by Argentinian emigré architect Jorge Luis Arrigone, the project was an early attempt to introduce El Centro Interamericano de Vivienda y Planeamiento (Inter-American Housing and Planning Centre or CINVA) and United Nations orthodoxies of self-help housing to support displaced rural communities. Siyabuswa project’s appearance and repression prompt new forms of assessment of the roles played in global architecture at the peripheries of the Global South.

Following the Second World War, the Cold War initiated a bipolar contest for superiority that would last for decades, and in this era the Soviet Union established communist regimes in Eastern Europe. Nationalism, which the Soviet Union tried to oppress but which played a role in the delegitimization of Soviet control, became an important topic of discussion between authorisation regimes and democratisation efforts in the world politics. During and after the Cold War period several thoughts were introduced about nationalism from different perspectives. Francis Fukuyama was among the important figures who thought about nationalism at that time. In his book “The End of History”, Fukuyama touched upon nationalism to explain the struggle for recognition and argued that nationalism is a form of recognition. In this context, this article first focuses on the historical timeline and nationalism in Eastern Europe in the Cold War era. Then, it examines the events that took place in Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the Cold War by concentrating on Fukuyama’s inferences about nationalism and seeks an answer to the reconsideration of nationalism.

International expert agencies and the nuclear industry concur that nuclear technology is necessary to solve both energy and climate crises. This argument is based on the still-alive ideology of containment, a set of discursive and material practices that aim at isolating nuclear technology from the environment. Based on a brief discussion of recent nuclear decommissioning cases, the article argues that containment is a myth invented to expand commercial nuclear applications. It describes the emergence of containment strategies through the illustration of three strategic regulatory turns in the US: the Price-Anderson Act, the development of siting criteria, and the establishment of radioprotection standards.

Russell Train is currently regarded as the pioneer of American environmental diplomacy. He contributed, as Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and first special presidential envoy for the environment, to putting environmental protection at the core of the American political agenda, giving adequate attention to the weight of public opinion and the claims of the increasingly influential environmental movement. He harnessed the environment primarily as a concrete tool for détente, raising awareness about the issue and encouraging effective countermeasures to start dealing with the adverse effects of human-induced pollution.

Background. The purpose of the article is to examine the activities of the CPSU in supporting the international communist movement in order to update this experience in view of the modern practice of foreign financing of political parties, as well as for a more in-depth understanding of the history of the CPSU and the Soviet state. Materials and methods. The work was carried out using the transcript of parliamentary hearings on the il-legal financial activities of the CPSU on February 10, 1992, as well as journalistic materials from the federal press of various political orientations: Pravda, Sovetskaya Rossiya, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Trud, Rossiya. Results. New data was obtained on the mechanisms and extent of assistance to friendly parties and movements by the CPSU, the impact of such activities and its publicity on the electoral process in a number of countries, new materials were identified on the activities of the party technical group at the international department. Conclusions. Based on the study of materials, it is possible to clarify and confirm previously made conclusions about the scale and variety of assistance provided by the CPSU to friendly parties and movements. At the same time, new materials make it possible to correct a number of conclusions about the effectiveness of this assistance towards a more skeptical assessment. Controversial issues are identified that cannot be resolved using the current material and that may be of interest to future researchers.

The following article is a local case study that examines the shared heritage of German and Spanish fascism in Berlin and its critical artistic reappraisal using the example of historical sites and monuments of art and architecture of the 20th century. The text is based on the experiences and controversial discussions of the heritage conservation and restoration in the German capital after the opening of the Berlin Wall (1989/90) and the fall of the Iron Curtain in Europe (1989/1991). Characteristic differences in the reception of history and heritage between the western sectors of Berlin and East Berlin after 1945 also became apparent. The text owes essential impulses to the recent Action Group ‘Integrated and Comprehensive Approaches for Dissonant Heritage in Europe’ of the ‘Partnership Culture and Cultural Heritage’ within the framework of the ‘Urban Agenda of the EU’ and is intended as a contribution to the current discussion at the II International PAMEFRAN Conference “Heritege and conflict Debate on the management and treatment of a multifaceted object”. The article opposes a politically motivated iconoclasm of symbols and monuments of autocratic systems of the past and advocates for their critical reappraisal and commentary in situ.

This paper unveils the impact of architectural aid and knowledge exchange on the development of urban housing in North Korea during the 1950s and 1960s. By capturing the diplomatic maneuvers of the DPRK and detailing the aid it received, this paper situates the urban development of North Korea within the broader fabric of global urban experiments. North Korea received foreign architectural assistance more swiftly than Vietnam, enabling the early adoption of advanced architectural technology and theory in urban construction compared to South Korea. However, the intricate relationships and evolving aid dynamics with fraternal socialist countries within the Cold War paradigm later emerged as one of the motivating factors for North Korea to prioritize independent architectural development. Meanwhile, amidst the emphasis on Juche construction and rapid industrialization, the field of architecture, both in academia and on construction sites, faced the challenge of minimizing materials and resources to enhance productivity. Various agents within North Korea’s architectural workforce presented diverse viewpoints and engaged in complex negotiations with the party regarding resource conservation. Drawing from a vast array of primary sources from North Korea and socialist countries, this research elucidates the heterogeneous comprehension of aid acquisition and the indigenous adaptation of the practice and theory of architecture in postwar North Korea.

Yugoslav and German “questions” emerged in the early 1950s as specific issues in international politics marked by the Cold War. Through them, the strengths of the opposing blocs led by the superpowers, the USA and the USSR, were measured in various ways and with different intensities. This paper attempts to reconstruct and analyze the initial phase of the relationship between Yugoslav Communists and German Social Democrats, from the establishment of closer contacts to the change in the foreign policy situation after Stalin’s death. The paper is mainly based on research using unpublished archived materials from domestic sources and relevant domestic and foreign literature.

The representation of Yugoslavia and its populace in Life and Time magazines from the end of World War II until the rise of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in 1945 and the subsequent death of President Josip Broz Tito in 1980 was characterized by fluctuations that aligned with the volatility of relations between Washington and Belgrade. The accession of the communist regime to power was viewed as a foreseeable outcome, as the population of this region of Europe, due to their impoverished and uneducated state, was believed to be ill-equipped to comprehend and embrace the concept of democracy. Consequently, individuals were selectively chosen to be depicted in a positive light when Yugoslavia was once again considered an ally following the conflict with the Cominform in 1948. Nevertheless, the representation of the Yugoslav people was brief and superficial, lacking in any true endeavor to demonstrate empathy for their situation and hardships. In spite of efforts to showcase certain favorable aspects, the representation of Yugoslavia that evolved over time in the magazines was predominantly consistent with the Cold War preconceptions that Americans associated with communism. This representation was infused with elements of nineteenth-century imperial Balkanism, indicating that Life and Time were disinclined to deviate far from the predetermined framework and societal roles assigned to them.

The aim of this article is to examine applicability of classical geopolitics to interpret the context of the war in Ukraine. The author argues that the classical geopolitical approach has shortages in explaining the current warfare in Ukraine, because territory, space, and geography are not sufficient to explain complex international relations in today's globalized world. The interventionistic policy of the US, the main force of Atlanticism, undoubtfully has the key role in shaping the situation in Ukraine, but a wider picture indicates presence and influence of corporate and financial non-state actors that benefit from strengthening military-industrial complex. The author concludes that critical geopolitics offers deeper inquiry into the geopolitical claims than the classical geopolitical thought because the former recognizes that nowadays states are not only geopolitical agents. There are indications that the war in Ukraine is waged by Western political, economic, military, and financial elites against Russia as a part of the strategy to maintain global power and prevent rising multipolarity.

Bilateral relations between states have always been dynamic and can go in either direction. For much of history, Pakistan and Russia have remained in a contained relationship, particularly during the Cold War. However, post 9/11, due to changes in Pakistan's pro-Taliban policy, gradual ground for re-engagement has risen into prominence between Russia and Pakistan. But, because of the troubling history, both sides remained distant. However, for the past ten years, due to the change in the international order, both countries found each other in the convergence of bilateral relations. The research paper intended to employ the commercial liberalism branch of neoliberal institutionalism to evaluate emerging bilateral ties between Russia and Pakistan. Based on Immanuel Kant’s principle of universal hospitality, commercial liberalism sheds light on the importance of economic interdependence and free trade in sustaining peace. The impending challenges and compelling opportunities were discussed in this paper. The nature of bilateral relations sprouted from opportunities and challenges and was categorised into complementary and non-complementary bifurcation. Based on this division, the research has argued that the trajectory of emergent bilateral relations has ample space to grow and head upward. The study suggests that institutional mechanisms such as JMCC, JMC, and JWGs, with their potential to navigate challenges, offer reassurance in the face of potential obstacles in bilateral relations. Bibliography Entry Ali, Usman and Tauseef Javed. 2024. "Pakistan-Russia Emerging Cooperation: Opportunities and Challenges." Margalla Papers 28 (1): 141-160.

The essay presents a close reading of Sylvia Plath's poem "Fever 103°" and argues that Plath's construction of her speaker's vulnerable self facilitates a breakdown of the boundaries between the embodied self and its socio-cultural environment. The argument is built on recent scholarship on Plath's work that views it in the context of the global political movements of her time. By examining the ways in which Plath's use of Cold War discourses shapes her construction of vulnerability, the essay shows how this construction produces the embodied self as deeply entangled with global political movements manifesting in and through the embodied self. By evoking and concurrently undermining the "poetics of hygiene," the poem suggests that any attempt to ascertain a state of utmost purity, of clearly delineated bodily and cultural boundaries, can only end in annihilation. It is in this sense that Plath's representation of her speaker's vulnerable self allows her to develop an astute perspective on the interconnectedness of the private, the national, and the global socio-political environment. In this way, the poet's construction of a vulnerable self represents an understanding of a globally interconnected world that poses localized dangers of (self-)destruction.

This article describes popular game titles used in history education in Poland. In the first part, games designed by the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) are presented, along with examples of their use and feedback expressed after playing by students. The second part of the article discusses the global bestselling game Twilight Struggle along with a case study of its use with history students. The purpose of the article is to point out the possibilities of gamification of historical education and, above all, to indicate the applications of board games in the academic training of teachers who later create school reality with their work.

In a democratic country like Taiwan, civic participation generally takes place everywhere and every day in various forms, such as petitioning, community building, and protesting, and it is too mundane to be noted. Not until the moment of crisis could the energy it has harbored be seen. COVID-19 undoubtedly is a challenge for all humans in the world. Misfortune as it was, this state of exception presented people with resilience and creativity to assist one another. Starting from an incident of “veg boxes” during the pandemic, this article tries to connect the optimistic view toward social changes with its possible model. By linking Homemakers United Foundation, a local organization closely related to food and environmental issues, and its development to the history of nation-building, this article also discusses what kind of civic imagination has been deployed and its connection with history.

The history of Christian democratic party (DC) in Emilia-Romagna is only partially investigated by historians. By considering a variety of sources, this article reconstructs the reaction of the regional DC leadership to the deaths in Modena on 9 January 1950; the aim is to draw the general biographies of the protagonists, to highlight the role of «L’Avvenire d’Italia» and the repercussions that the debate in Emilia-Romagna had on the national leadership, using as a center of gravity the problems of public order of that year and anti-communism, widespread in large layers of Italian society.

In 1951, the Organization of American States established the Centro Interamericano de Vivienda y Planeamiento (CINVA) to provide specialized training to tackle the housing problem. Based on archival documentation examined at the Rockefeller Archive Center and the Central and Historical Archive of the National University of Colombia, this article explores two significant episodes in which the story of one of the Center's most successful outputs connects to the history of the Cold War. It thus contributes to the literature investigating the architecture and related technologies of development aid in the historical context of the Cold War with a precise focus on the role of non-governmental actors. After detailing the history of the CINVA-Ram machine, the pressing machine to produce rammed-earth blocks developed at the Center and later exported to America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, the article explores its deployment in two different fronts of the Cold War: Ghana and South Vietnam. As highlighted in the conclusions, the significance of CINVA-Ram use in these contexts is manyfold. Firstly, its diffusion, although appearing as a successful case of south-to-south cooperation, was in fact possible because of the Rockefeller family-controlled IBEC's involvement. Secondly, it shows the global outreach of the intertwined action of governmental agencies, private companies, and NGOs, when fighting poverty and housing shortage via aided self-help initiatives were complementary strategies to the armed containment of Communism. Finally, it discusses the role played by US governmental and non-governmental actors in advancing US interests through technoscience, highlighting how the battle against poverty in the so-called “Third World” was in this case fought with one of the oldest and simplest construction techniques in the ideological framework of self-help.

At the beginning of the new millennium, in 2001 to be precise, a work began that at the time turned out to be a titanic task. The project of sequencing the genome of the bacterium Rhizobium etli -a nitrogen-fixing bacterium symbiotic with the bean plant- was the first to be carried out in Mexico and the results were not published until a few years later. But how did molecular biology and genetic engineering arrive in Mexico? Among the many ways and paths that can lead to an answer, we chose the laboratory work of Dr. Fernando Bastarrachea Avilés and his trajectory to answer this question but mainly how the practice of bacterial molecular genetics was constructed in Mexico during the last years of the Cold War (1970-1980). As a first step we used the global history of science, where the units of historical analysis are the circulation of knowledge and collaborative networks. As a second step, we conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with former students of that laboratory in the ‘80s. Consequently, our aim is to account for the process of building socio-technical networks, focused on the field of microbiology.

The study analyses how the Norwegian Press presented the Romanian parliamentary election of 19 November 1946. The author studied editorials, already translated in Romanian by the Romanian Legation in Oslo at that time, and found at the Diplomatic Archives of the Romanian Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Bucharest. As it has promised to the United States and British Governments in order to be recognized by those two great powers, the Groza Government, backed by the occupying Soviets, had to organize the election. The most important Norwegian press depicted the violence and pressure on the opposition to stop meetings, the fact that the government’s representatives banished the opposition’s ones from the polling places, how the government bought votes on the black market, how a part of the people used more than one vote, or how the oppositions’ supporters were not allowed to vote. Despite less important far-left newspapers, the most prestigious Norwegian newspapers concluded that the election was neither fair or free.

Today, Andy Warhol is recognized as one of the best-selling twentieth-century artists in the world. But how did he move from an artist of only American interest to the most expensive Pop Art star on the international scene? The current paper argues that legendary Swedish art curator Pontus Hultén played a crucial role in the international promotion of Andy Warhol’s Pop Art during the early years of the Cultural Cold War. Despite the profound influence of the contemporaries Andy Warhol and Pontus Hultén on twentieth-century art history, the connection between the American Pop artist and the legendary Swedish curator has been insufficiently explored in academia. Based on the archives of the Andy Warhol Museum Archives in Pittsburgh, the Smithsonian Archives of American Art in Washington D.C., and the Centre Pompidou Archives in Paris, this paper reveals how and why Hultén exhibited Warhol’s Pop Art in the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, by first including his works in the American Pop Art group show in 1964 and later organizing the Andy Warhol retrospective in 1968.

The article attempts to define the role of Plovdiv International Fair in the foreign trade relations of Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia – countries belonging to the same economic and political world in the inter-bloc confrontation during the Cold War. The period from the middle 1940s and the 1950s was chosen, because then Czechoslovakia was the second most important trade socialist partner for Bulgaria, which provided machinery, equipment and complete projects for Bulgarian industrialization. The study traces the gradual weakening of the importance of the fair for their trade relations with the increase of integration processes in the COMECON since 1956, when the international socialist division of labour was created and the processes of coordinating business plans were centralized. The analysis of the set problems is based on archival material not yet in scientific circulation, stored in the State Archives of Plovdiv, as well as on studies examining the Bulgarian-Czechoslovak economic relations for the period.

This study presents the perspective of Czechoslovak diplomacy on the events of the Yom Kippur War (1973) in the context Czechoslovak foreign policy towards the Arab-Israeli conflict in early 1970s. The research is based on so far rather underexplored archival sources. Despite Czechoslovakia's declared unequivocal support for the Arab side of the conflict, Czechoslovak Middle Eastern policy since the mid-1950s was not entirely unconditional in relation to the Arab countries. Internal documents of Czechoslovak government occasionally revealed criticisms of Arab representatives. The Yom Kippur War represented a significant moment in this regard, as it was a military confrontation initiated not by Israel but by the Arab coalition, posing a challenge for Czechoslovak propaganda. Simultaneously, this armed conflict presented an opportunity for Communist Czechoslovakia to further deepen its relations with its Arab allies.

Military Strategy is the process of matching the resources provided to military power according to the threat. Threat is about the future rather than the present and involves an assessment based on the predictions. In a sense, it is perception. When perception is far from reality, it leads to unnecessary waste of resources or, conversely, to increased risks for countries. This study aims to explain the impact of threat perception on military strategy during the Cold War period through the case of Türkiye. The findings obtained through document analysis are supported by interviews with retired military officers specialized in military strategy. According to the main argument of the article, Türkiye’s threat perception during the Cold War was determined by the United States (US) and Türkiye’s defence design was based on this threat created by the US. Questioning the dimensions and accuracy of the threat revealed that the threat was overestimated. One of the reasons why the US overestimated the Soviet threat was its need to appropriate its resources by distributing the need for conventional power among its allies, and another reason was its desire to keep the Alliance under control. However, countries like Türkiye had to spend more strategic resources on military power than necessary.

The deterioration of political and ideological ties between China and the Soviet Union, known as the Sino-Soviet split, is considered a pivotal moment in Cold War history. Extensive scholarly study has been conducted over the past few decades to uncover its causes, but researchers have yet to reach a consensus. This study explores the views of Russian and Western academics regarding the origins of the communist superpowers’ split, with an emphasis on the part played by ideological, geopolitical, and subjective factors. The research findings indicate that the breakdown of their relationship cannot be attributed to a singular cause; rather, a multitude of factors, such as ideological differences, geopolitical interests, and interpersonal dynamics, interacted in a complex manner. Authors from both Russia and the West offer insightful accounts of the causes of the conflict. By working in concert, their differing perspectives create a thorough, inclusive and reliable narrative of how the division came about. In light of ongoing tensions between the US, China and Russia, a comprehensive understanding of the causes of the Sino-Soviet split provides valuable insights into the current state of international politics.

Intelligence analysis is inextricably linked to the CIA, where it was established and developed as a specific professional activity. Based on a short-lived experience, accumulated during World War II, the CIA’s first analytical structure, the Office of Reports and Estimates (ORE), faced the difficulty of producing intelligence products on the new security environment of the early Cold War period, with the focus on the threat posed by the USSR.

The article reconstructs Howard Fast’s literary contacts with Soviet writers during the Khrushchev Thaw and traces the history of his painful break with the Communist movement. Based on Fast’s autobiographical books, personal correspondence, as well as articles in the Party press (Masses and Mainstream, Daily Worker), the paper demonstrates that at the beginning of 1956 the writer condemned the Stalinist regime as “bloody” and “criminal”. However, in his correspondence with the Soviet friends (Boris Izakov and Boris Polevoy) Fast tried not to enter into direct confrontation and only lamented the plight of the leftist movement in America. His Soviet friends learned about the writer’s departure from the US Communist Party from the press only in February 1957. Having every reason to believe that Fast would have informed them about such a serious step personally in a confidential manner, prominent functionaries of the Foreign Commission of the Soviet Writers’ Union became upset and furious having read Fast’s exclusive interview to Harry Schwartz, a newsman working for the New York Times. At this point Fast declared a fullfledged information war on the USSR: he accused the Soviet government of being anti- Semitic, antidemocratic and terroristic. In turn, Moscow launched a campaign to discredit Fast. After 1958, the writer was no longer mentioned in Soviet reviews, correspondence with him ceased, and all working contacts were broken off. In his post-communist period, Fast turned to the autobiographical genre, writing two books: The Naked God and Being Red, where, among other things, he provided insights into his difficult relationships with the representatives of the Soviet literary establishment. Fast’s correspondence with Boris Izakov and Boris Polevoy from the funds of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art is published in the addendum.

Over two decades from 1949 until the resumption of the diplomatic relations between these two countries in 1972, West German companies never gave up on the Chinese market despite substantial difficulties caused by Cold War frictions. This paper exams the payment transactions and terms of credits for financing industrial projects between the PRC and West German companies.

The subject field of the article is the historical-imagological spectrum and comparative perspective. The main actors that influenced the dynamics of the representation of the enemy/other image in the political discourse of the Cold War are investigated. The main type of sources were journalistic materials presented by Soviet and American literature of various levels, from newspaper publications to voluminous popular science publications. Conclusions are drawn about the ambivalence of cultural space, the coexistence of both stable imagological landmarks and constructs, and their adjustments, counter “drifts” of dehumanization or rehumanization emanating from the opposing sides and caused by the stages of the Cold War.

Although the Vietnam War has been referred to as the “first television war” in United States history, the Korean War (1950-1953) was the first during which professional television journalists like Edward R. Murrow travelled to and reported from combat zones to write, film, and edit television broadcasts for domestic audiences. Mostly remembered as figures of resistance to the political demagoguery of the 1950s through the 1954 televised confrontations with Senator Joseph McCarthy, Edward R. Murrow and Fred W. Friendly were also pioneers in the shaping of journalism on the radio (Hear It Now, 1950-1951) and on television (See It Now, 1951-1958). By using the radio archives of Hear It Now and original television transcripts of See It Now from the Paley Center for Media, New York City (NY), this article studies the formal and aesthetic features of Murrow and Friendly’s broadcasts from 1950 to 1953. These broadcasts depicted American soldiers as selfless individuals sacrificing the comfort of domestic prosperity in order to contain the spread of communism abroad and to defend the remote lands of foreign peoples. The aim of this article is to question Murrow’s identity of defiance in relation to the powers that be. The study reveals a more complex journalistic form that blends elements of mass education and grey propaganda, one that rallies American public opinion to the cause of containment under Truman’s administration.

This article seeks to answer the question of how some European countries prepare their societies for possible wars and crises in the wake of increasing security threats. In the modern era, civilians have also become a part of the war, since the wars have started to affect those behind the frontlines. In response to this, states developed various practices to prepare their people for the devastating effects of war. The activities carried out under the name of Total Defence in many countries during the Cold War years were a product of this understanding and preparations. The applications that were shelved in many countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union have been brought back to the agenda after 2014 especially with the Russian-Ukrainian War and with the preparations of European societies against war and crisis. Based on the claim that these preparations do not carry revolutionary innovations, this study concludes that the threat perception, historical memory, and past collective defence experiences of the countries shape the current practices. The last part of the article evaluates a brief history of the social preparedness of Turkish society in war and crises in terms of the concept of total defence.

For almost 60 years, the United States has tried to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro in Cuba, using a variety of means, including chemical and biological agents. At the same time, their use has always been officially denied by Washington. The purpose of this article is to summarize the available sources proving the involvement of the United States, as well as the groups of the Cuban opposition created and supported by the US, in biological and chemical sabotage against both the economy and the people of Cuba. Sources, research methods. The author used a variety of open sources, including the statements by Cuban officials, materials from the Cuban and American press, declassified documents from the US government agencies, as well as public confessions of former CIA agents and Cuban opposition figures. The research method is the cross analysis. The discussion of the results. The declassified US documents show that the organizers of «Operation 40» and «Operation Mongoose» planned to use biological agents and parasitic plants against plantations of crops and livestock. Sugar exported to the USSR was also poisoned. In addition, the head of one of the Cuban terrorist organizations admitted that he had imported biological agents to Cuba, which provoked an epidemic of dengue hemorrhagic fever in 1981. The testimoies of several other former CIA agents also point to the use of African swine fever in 1971 to kill pigs in Cuba. The atypical course of the Dengue fever epidemic in 1981, as well as the absence of a strain (Dengue-2) of this virus in the Western Hemisphere at that time, indicate the planned nature of the sabotage, which resulted in an outbreak on the island. Conclusions. During the Cold War, the United States actively used chemical and biological agents against agriculture and the people of Cuba. The facts considered allow us to draw conclusions about the nature of the methods that the CIA used to organize and conduct biosabotage: such operations were planned «in the long run» and had large-scale goals – for example, to eliminate sugar production on the island or cause famine; highly contagious pathogens of human and animal diseases were used for biological sabotage; artificially caused outbreaks of epidemics and epizootics were disguised as natural ones; representatives of the local opposition, as well as mercenaries, were involved in the implementation of sabotage; to infect farm animals, vaccines contaminated with virulent strains directly at biofactories, as well as contaminated feed were used.

Günümüzde popülerliğini belli ölçülerde koruyan İzmir Enternasyonal Fuarı Cumhuriyet idaresinin dışarıya açılan bir kapısı olarak kabul edilebilir. İzmir kentinin imparatorluk geçmişinden sıyrılmaya başladığı 1930’lu yıllarda nüfus yapısında yaşadığı hızlı dönüşüm iktisadi gelişmelerle yeni bir boyut kazanmıştır. İzmir’de yapılan imar değişikliklerinden sonra kentin modernite ile tanışması büyük ölçüde 1922 İzmir yangınının sunduğu fırsatın neticesinde hayat buldu. Yeni imar planıyla kente kazandırılan Kültürpark’ın şehrin çehresini değiştirmesinin yanında 1930’lu yıllardan itibaren uluslararası bir organizasyon olan İzmir Fuarı’na ev sahipliği yapması oldukça önemli bir gelişmeydi. Cumhuriyet’in ilk yıllarından Soğuk Savaş yıllarına hatta neo-liberal dönemde bile İzmir Enternasyonal Fuarı ticari, kültürel ve diplomatik misyonlar taşımaya devam etmiştir. Bu çalışma kapsamında diplomasinin yumuşak güç unsurlarından biri olarak kabul edilen iktisadi diplomasinin İzmir Enternasyonal Fuarı’nda hangi kanallar ve aktörlerle takip edildiği sorusuna daha ziyade 1950’li yıllar için yanıtlar aranacaktır.