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The Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM) played a key role in handling the Hungarian refugee crisis of 1956. It was this body, established in 1951, that organised the registration and transport of some 200,000 Hungarian refugees in Austria and Yugoslavia. This paper examines this international migration organisation in the 1950s based on the archives of the ICEM and the UN Secretariat, as well as on US, British and French foreign policy documents. It focuses on the workings of the ICEM concerning the Hungarian refugee crisis and its influence upon the subsequent history of the organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Their chapter focuses on the evolution of Yugoslavia's foreign policy, tracing Yugoslavia's role as an aggressive regional player during the 1940s to its transition into a reliable partner towards the end of the Cold War. Breaking down bipolarity: Yugoslavia's foreign relations during the Cold War: Martin Previsi'c (ed.), (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021), xi + 286 pp Yugoslavia's disproportionately influential role during the Cold War is well established among historians of the twentieth century. [Extracted from the article]

This Research Note provides background information on how to access records held by South Africa's Department of Defence and Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO). Both repositories in Pretoria, the nation's executive capital, hold considerable documentation of interest to scholars of the Cold War. The Note outlines the locations of the two facilities, working conditions, and policies that govern the release of their materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late 1980s, Poles tuned in with great enthusiasm to the miniseries Shaka Zulu, starring Henry Cele as the so-called Black Napoleon. The apartheid-era production was one instance of exchanges between the apartheid regime and the Polish People's Republic. This counter-intuitive consonance – the screening of an apartheid cultural production in late-Communist Poland – is a fascinating case study that provides one important lens to understand the nature of the relationship between the two regimes, as well as insight into late-apartheid international relations in the last years of the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Congressman Charles J. Kersten (R-WI) authored the Kersten Amendment to the Mutual Security Act of 1951, allocating $100 million annually to train refugees from Eastern European countries in national military units in support of NATO or for "some other purpose." He advocated "positive" policies to promote liberation of captive Eastern European peoples, including waging an all-out psychological war and training the exiles; Kersten funds supported ongoing covert plans by the CIA and State Department. His career reveals the influence of religious faith on foreign relations and both cooperation and tensions between Congress and the Administration in the early Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author replies on comment by Marcelo Casals on his essay ‘Border Crossings and the Remaking of Latin American Cold War Studies.' He discusses U.S. President Donald Trump's misguided immigration policy and field of anthropology, political science, international relations, and cultural studies. It also mentions self-identified generation of historians and international relations scholars with a penchant for border crossings.

Friendly relations between the United States and Costa Rica were strained during the early 1970s as the latter sought the recall of the US ambassador and CIA station chief amidst rumours of coup plots against influential social democratic president José Figueres. Figueres's efforts to normalise relations with the Soviet bloc while legalising the Communist Party at home provided the broader context. Secret US intelligence about a pact between Figueres, local communists, and the Soviet Union drove the conflict. Drawing on declassified US documents, this study seeks the right balance between Latin American agency and US hegemony during the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After 1967, West Germany started to develop its own 'Arab policy'. Its initial focus was not the Arab peninsula, but North Africa, particularly Algeria and Libya. The main reasons were what Bonn perceived to be strategic necessity in the face of a Soviet advance there and convenience, as the North African states seemed more open to West German overtures in the late 1960s. But Bonn's strategy failed. By 1973 it re-calibrated its policy towards the Arab peninsula. Overall, this West German 'Mediterranean moment' illustrates how this 'Arab policy' was motivated by the dynamics of the Cold War in Central Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, by exploring the complex interaction among domestic politics, foreign policy, and the Cold War in Africa, analyses Kenya's relations with Communist China between 1964 and 1970. As newly independent Kenya sought foreign aid and trade opportunities, the Sino-Soviet competition for influence in the 'Third World' enabled limited bargaining power for the Kenyan nation, commonly perceived as 'weak'. Through an analysis of the factional political struggles within the Kenya African National Union (KANU) as well as Oginga Odinga's overtures to China, this article emphasises the significance of local dynamics and forces in determining the unfolding 'local' Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores a hitherto unexamined chapter of German Cold War politics: West Germany's relations with Indonesia between 1955 and 1965. Indonesia was a peculiar case, as in the late 1950s and early 1960s, President Sukarno turned his country into a radical champion of 'anti-imperialism'. This included actions directed against the Netherlands, Britain, Malaysia, and the United States. As part of a comprehensive strategy to isolate East Germany in the 'Third World', West German diplomacy nevertheless tried to maintain solid relations with Sukarno's increasingly unpredictable Indonesia, even if that meant undermining the position of Western allies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India's recognition of West, but not East, Germany was the foundation of an inconsistent policy on Germany from India and many other non-aligned countries. It was the outcome of a lack of professionalism, indecisiveness, the pragmatic considerations of a junior Indian diplomat in Berlin, and the laconic approval of the anti-communist secretary-general of the Ministry of External Affairs, Girja Shankar Bajpai. Neither Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru nor his advisor V.K. Krishnan Menon were involved at all. Officials around Foreign Secretary K.P.S. Menon held that the GDR should also be recognised in due course, but did not exercise sufficient influence. India would stand by its decision for 23 years and thereby set an example for other non-aligned countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an explanation for North Korea-Zimbabwe bilateral relations from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, in the context of Cold War in the Third World. Supporting the military resistance of African nations, North Korea sought to gain its dominance over South Korea in the diplomatic war between the two Koreas. North Korea contributed to the liberation of Zimbabwe and helped Robert Mugabe establish his political foundations in the country. However, North Korea’s political gain from Zimbabwe was less than it expected and hence did not make any significant changes in its competition with South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the central decades of the Cold War, China was Albania’s only ally. The aim of this article is to analyse how the Chinese Cultural Revolution affected Sino-Albanian relations. This article argues that the events in China threatened to undermine the Sino-Albanian alliance, because Albania did not endorse most of the Cultural Revolution’s policies, but supported it only for the sake of relations with China and the benefits received from this alliance. In a time when the Cultural Revolution caused enormous difficulties to the Chinese economy, Albania nonetheless received an increasing amount of aid. Based on recently released archives, this case study sheds light on this underexplored Cold War alliance and adds to our understanding of how the Cultural Revolution had implications beyond China’s borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that the deep political, economic, and social crisis in Poland in 1980–1981 served as a vehicle for China to pursue its political and ideological agenda towards Eastern Europe, which it previously treated as marginal in its economic modernization efforts. The article also shows that while the Polish leadership used China economically to help with its survival, it did not go beyond the constraints laid out by the framework dictated by the Sino-Soviet split. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper aims to analyse the evolution of Sino-Italian relations from the foundation of the PRC to the end of the Cold War, with a special focus on the construction of the official relationship from 1970 to 1992. The article has been divided into three parts: a critical reflection on the historical context that set the ground for the evolution of Sino-Italian relations between the 1950s and the 1970s; an assessment of the historical impact of normalisation; and a reconstruction of the main dynamics in bilateral relations between 1970 and 1992. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Cold War has had an extended life span in Danish foreign policy due to the establishment of a right-wing revisionist agenda. This article argues that this revisionism came to serve different contemporary purposes under the Anders Fogh Rasmussen governments. Externally it was used to legitimise the Danish participation in the Iraq War and came to serve as a tool to discipline the war-sceptical social democratic led opposition and secured parliamentary support for an offensive Liberal-inspired activism in Danish foreign policy. Domestically the revisionism became entangled with the overall cultural war that the Liberal-led government launched and thereby became a part of the overall ideological war that united the governing coalition from 2001 to 2011. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides the historical explanation for Nordpolitik, which built the foundation for Roh Tae-woo's China policy and the end of Cold War in East Asia. It first discusses Roh's China policy with the process for South Korea and China's diplomatic relationship as well as other factors that affected the rapprochement between the two countries in the early 1990s. Then, the article makes a brief evaluation of current South Korean-Chinese relations and policy suggestions for the future development of the relationship between the two countries. Based on newly discovered archival resources and political records in South Korea and China, this article provides a more exact picture of international relations between the two states in the early 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A founder member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), South Africa embarked on an ambitious nuclear weapons programme contrary to the IAEA Statute. Against the background of the Cold War, South Africa's threat perception included, amongst others, threats posed by the Soviet Union, which was a nuclear-armed state and a supporter of the banned South African liberation movements. Moreover, the South African government's apartheid policies resulted in the country's increased international isolation, which also affected its relations with the IAEA. A major global campaign to isolate the apartheid government in South Africa spilt over to the IAEA, resulting in several punitive actions against South Africa. Tracing the South African case through several phases, this article illustrates the intimate links between state identity, state ideology, nationalism, status, and threat perception. The South African case illustrates the need for sustained scholarship on all the dimensions of the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incorporating previously-untapped Dominican, Costa Rican, and Cuban sources, this article reveals how the international Cold War and US policy towards Guatemala overlapped with long-standing regional conflicts in the greater Caribbean basin. During the post-war democratic openings, exiles with patron presidents or dictators composed two loosely-formed networks seeking to destabilise opposing governments. The resulting inter-American conflicts contributed to critical events in the region, most notably US officials’ Cold War-influenced policy to overthrow the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz in the early 1950s. These conflicts persisted and continued overlapping with the international Cold War while often challenging US officials’ Cold War goals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article argues that Mikhail Gorbachev and his entourage conducted their policy on the German Question in the situation of the rapidly accelerating Soviet political and financial crisis. Therefore, their foreign policy can only be understood through the prism of domestic concerns and circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of a non-democratic China as the world ‘s second largest economy, still officially subscribing to Communism or ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’ as its ideology1, has raised the spectre of the return of the Cold War to Asia with the United States and China on opposing sides, with China backed by Russia, its former Cold War ally. But to what extent are there historical parallels between the Cold War and the current East Asian international relations system? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1961, at the height of the Berlin crisis, the United States and Great Britain simultaneously struggled to adopt effective policies toward the first meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade. While the John F. Kennedy administration initially adopted a policy of standoffishness toward the conference, the government of Harold Macmillan engaged in a campaign of quietly encouraging moderate attendance. Moderate British expectations led to sound policy, whereas the Kennedy administration's inability to develop a coherent outlook and response cost it a priceless opportunity to understand the emerging phenomenon of nonalignment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a narrative retelling of a little known but incredible journey from Xinjiang to New York City made by a group of ethnic Russians in the mid-twentieth century, this article shows how some of the earliest and most poignant manifestations of the Cold War, including nuclear rivalry and espionage, were made evident in Chinese Central Asia. Wrapped up within an intense competition for resources, information, and influence between the United States, the Soviet Union, and two Chinese regimes, the Russians at the heart of this article reveal how the Cold War was a truly global conflict which was intimately experienced by ordinary peoples and often times in the places most far removed. This episode is furthermore a reminder that even if the Cold War did produce stability at the macro-level, the outcomes of the strategic rivalry and competition between the Soviet Union and the United States were violent and tragic, not necessarily or exclusively for these countries but especially for their allies and accomplices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on Chilean, Soviet, American, and Italian declassified documents, this article examines a particular case in the global Cold War: the only international exchange of political prisoners during that period, involving the general secretary of the Chilean Communist Party Luis Corvalán and Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky. It emphasises the intersecting agendas, purposes, and consequences of multiple state and non-state actors in this episode: from the governments of Chile, the US, and the USSR, to the Chilean Communist Party, the Soviet dissident movement, and finally to the European communist parties, Cuba, international solidarity, and human rights movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The long-dominant view of Swedish neutrality policy during the Cold War holds that it aimed to reduce tension in peacetime and to keep the country out of a new major war. The main dissenting view is that the policy primarily served peacetime purposes, including domestic politics, and that it would not have worked in a war. Sweden would then either have been attacked by the USSR because it was a Western country in its path of attack, or it would have been drawn in on the allied side because of its cooperation with the West, including tolerating overflights by allied bombers. This article presents a third perspective, namely that Sweden's leaders in the 1950s understood that neutrality would probably fail in wartime, but that they aimed to stay out of the violent initial nuclear exchange. This conclusion is supported by evidence hitherto overlooked in the existing research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sheds new light on the interrelation between Western European integration and the Cold War by unveiling and bringing under scrutiny the active role of the EEC in East–West relations. It argues that the EEC's pro-active Eastern policy was pivotal in loosening Cold War constraints in Europe and engendering instead a new kind of intra-European relations. Relations between the EEC and socialist bloc countries grew more intense and diversified, irrespective of the renewed superpower confrontation. Not only were détente and integration compatible, they actually reinforced each other, and the EEC proved to be a major and successful promoter of the overcoming of the Cold War in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first study of the BBC's East German Programme, a radio broadcast to the GDR. It traces the origins of the section from the Second World War, before analysing some of the output, above all the satirical Two Comrades programme which poked fun at apparatchiks, and the ‘Letters without Signature’ feedback programme from East German listeners. The piece therefore tries to close the transmitter–receiver loop, as well as suggesting ways in which audiences influenced broadcasters as well as vice-versa in the generation of public opinion in an (almost) closed system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In analysing the Shaba wars of 1977–78, in which Angola-based Katangese rebels invaded and destabilised Zaire, this article analyses the complex interaction between local forces, national states and the wider Cold War in Africa. As well as a case study of the National Front for the Liberation of Congo (FLNC) which carried out these invasions, the article seeks to provide new understanding of the ways in which both contemporaneous Cold War protagonists and subsequent historians have often failed to understand the underlying motivations of local forces which fought in conflicts that existed in problematic relationship to the wider Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the reports of the NATO study groups on the situation in the Third World, from the aftermath of the Suez crisis until the 1967 reorganization of the alliance through the Harmel Report. These were the infamous ‘out-of-area’ issues which caused significant disagreements within the alliance. NATO analysis was dominated by the primacy of the Cold War: its major subject was ‘Soviet penetration’ of the periphery, rather than the problems of the global South as such. Arguably, this Cold War perspective prevented the NATO analysts from fully evaluating the dangers of the situation in the Third World. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses Italy's foreign policy towards the end of the Albania's communism régime. At first, after the fall of the Berlin wall the Andreotti Government tried to link the Albanian question with Rome's policy towards Yugoslavia. Between 1990 and 1991 Italy was confronted with the deterioration of Albania's political and economic situation and was compelled to develop an ‘ad hoc’ policy, especially as far as the immigration issue was concerned. The crisis reached its climax in summer 1991. After the implementation of some emergency measures Italy tried to pursue a long term policy based on economic help and nation building initiatives in order to favour the setting up of a new Albanian post-communist régime. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Brazil is traditionally regarded as having been distant from its Latin American neighbours. However, new documents show that it was actually very involved in the Cold War struggles that engulfed the Southern Cone during the early 1970s. In Chile, Bolivia and Uruguay, Brazil's military regime intervened to prevent or overturn left-wing gains. It also did its best to encourage the United States to play a greater role in fighting the region's Cold War. Finally, it served as the model that military leaders in the Southern Cone looked to as they plotted to seize power. Examining these direct and indirect forms of influence, with particular reference to the relationship between Brazil and Chile, this article argues that Brazil's experience after 1964 was a game changer when it came to the way in which the inter-American Cold War unfolded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relying on newly opened documents from Canada and the United States this article examines Washington's effort, from January to October 1962, to internationalise the embargo of Cuba and explores the Canadian response. It argues that the Canadian government sought to support American policy while still maintaining its independent course of action. Although officials in Ottawa did not feel the need to abandon their position, they did come to appreciate that Canada's connections to Cuba were having an adverse impact on their country's vital relationship with the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to assess the sustainability of neutrality in the early Cold War. This issue is examined through the study of Switzerland's armament policy. The Swiss were able to maintain their status of a permanent neutral after the Second World War, and thus succeeded in upholding a centuries-long policy. Their armed neutrality, however, required modern weaponry. In search of this material Switzerland turned to the West, while refusing to purchase weapons from the East. The paper argues that Switzerland's self-imposed policy of armed neutrality increased Swiss dependence on western armaments, and thereby endangered its neutrality status and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1964 Romanian ‘Declaration of independence from Moscow’ signalled a change in Romania's foreign policy, widely argued to have been anti-Soviet after that date. Based on new archive materials, this article shows however that Romania's foreign policy should not be understood as anti-Soviet, but rather in terms of anti-hegemonism. Romania opposed and feared both the Soviet and American hegemonic tendencies, and their foreign policy decisions were very much influenced by these views. To exemplify the Romanian anti-hegemonic perceptions and policies, the article presents Romania's definitions on détente and the related Romanian goals in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), 1973–75. It concludes that in terms of state politics and security threats, during the 1960s and 1970s, Romania saw the Cold War opposition not as an East–West, socialist–capitalist one, but rather as superpowers/great powers versus all the other powers. Furthermore, for Romania, détente represented a threat because it created the context for the hegemons to agree once again upon the fate of ‘the others’, negatively affecting their interests. The article also reveals the limits of the objectivist approach in dealing with different Cold War issues, and proposes a perceptual approach. It also opens further discussion of how leaders' perceptions influenced Romania's foreign policy decision making during that time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article re-examines America's approach to cold war modernisation in US–Arab relations during the era of Nasser. It shows how US and Arab modernisers pursued different aims on the basis of similar assumptions about the nature of societal change. By analysing Arabic political literature and describing US–Arab conflicts over development in Iraq and Egypt, it illustrates how the cold war raised expectations regarding total modernising systems and escalated an earlier rivalry among Arab anti-colonial movements. This contribution fills a gap between studies of cold war development that emphasise conflict and those that explain modernisation theory in an exclusively American context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relying on so far untapped Vietnamese archival sources, this article examines the impact of China's gradual curtailment of its economic assistance to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's (DRV) war and economic recovery efforts and its implications for Sino-Vietnamese relations between 1972 and 1975. While Beijing's gradual reduction of aid to the DRV during this period was primarily motivated by the declining importance of North Vietnam to China's strategic security combined with the reality of China's domestic economic hardship which largely resulted from the disastrous Cultural Revolution of 1966–69, Hanoi's reactions and policy responses were driven by their deep-rooted perception of Beijing's insincerity and hidden intention to keep Vietnam weak. The Sino-Vietnamese conflict that ensued after 1975 was not inevitable; Hanoi's leaders launched concerted diplomatic efforts to improve economic relations with Beijing throughout 1975 because they clearly recognised the importance of China's continued economic assistance and preferential trade agreements to its first five year plan (1976–80). However, Beijing's unchanged position and hasty decision to totally cut off aid to Vietnam and additionally take punitive economic measures against Vietnam's first five-year plan in late 1975 while at the same time increasing economic and military aid to the Democratic Kampuchea compelled Hanoi to tilt closer towards Moscow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon documentary and other evidence from Vietnam this paper argues that in 1954 the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRVN) accepted negotiations and a diplomatic solution to its war against France because it served some of its most vital interests and satisfied its sense of the possibilities of the moment. To be sure, the DRVN leadership responded positively to concerns and pressures from its socialist allies, the Soviet Union and China, on some issues in Geneva. But it was not, as western scholars have maintained, acting against its own better judgement or strategic imperatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Openly critical at times of the United States for its actions in the Vietnam War, Canada was not for all that in a position to put its continental interests into question, and advocated therefore a conciliatory agenda towards its neighbour in this matter. This was particularly true in 1973 when it accepted an American invitation to take part in the international commission for implementing a ceasefire in Vietnam, thereby providing the US with a chance to withdraw without losing face completely. This article also notes that, in a show of North Atlantic solidarity, as the Cold War went on, Canada's measures were supported all along by Great Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article surveys political, economic and cultural issues of British-Bulgarian relations. It argues that neither Bulgaria nor Britain appeared to have interest in total isolation. Therefore, Anglo-Bulgarian relations were about more than political tension and confrontation. The multifarious nature of the Cold War was displayed in this case - while Britain was losing its political influence in Bulgaria its trade with the country reached levels higher than before the war. Besides, Bulgaria tried to develop a cultural presentation in Britain in order to foster a positive image of the regime and thus respond to Western critiques regarding communist dictatorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Editors of the journal Cold War History have the pleasure to present this paper as the winner of the Best Paper Award at the last Graduate Conference on the Cold War, jointly organised every year by the University of California, Santa Barbara, the George Washington University, Washington DC, and the London School of Economics and Political Science, London. It is not often that a paper, as was the case with this one, won unanimous endorsement from prominent Cold War scholars from all three institutions, present at the Conference. The last Conference was organised in April 2009, at LSE, in London and the host of the next one to be held on 22-24 April 2010 will be the George Washington University. By continuing with the practice we inaugurated last year, we wish to underline our commitment to promoting and encouraging new and substantive research of the Cold War by young scholars. As the colonial system collapsed quicker than anticipated in the post-Second World War period, the Soviet Union found itself unprepared, and it hurriedly tried to build the institutions necessary to conduct an active foreign, economic and military policy in the newly emerging states. The development of the Sino-Soviet split triggered a Chinese challenge to this Soviet push for influence, with Beijing portraying the USSR as another white, imperialist power that valued relations with the West over the cause of national liberation. Moscow was consequently forced to adapt its policy, particularly by taking a more militant approach, in order to neutralise the Chinese threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Setting out to assess Soviet policy toward Syria and Israel in the two years that preceded the Six Day War, this article argues that the Soviets were trying to implement a policy of detente in the Middle East. Therefore, they were wary of war between Israel and Syria and did their best, albeit clumsily at times, to prevent it from erupting. Their policy moved in cross-purposes to Syrian needs and little by little they lost control over their ally. This story should be read against the backdrop of the rebellion of radical regimes in the Third World against Soviet detente policy, thus emphasizing the ability of actors in the periphery of the Cold War to undermine superpower designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the intentions of the Soviet leadership towards Germany during the early 1950s in the light of recently released documents. Whereas Malenkov's comment of 2 June 1953 shows the commitment to a 'bourgeois' Germany and the victory of Beria in post-Stalin debates about the German question, Bodnăras' report on a meeting of the party chairmen and defense ministers of the people's democracies of 9 to 12 January 1951 underlines the real fear of war due to the Western decision to rearm Western Germany, and the minutes of the meetings between Stalin and the SED leadership on 1 and 7 April 1952 demonstrate both the difference of interest between Stalin and Ulbricht and the difference of performance between Stalin and Beria. Minutes of the Presidium of the CPSU's Central Committee show that the final decision for the stabilisation of the GDR was not taken before November 1955. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The origins of the Cold War have been the subject of numerous debates among international historians. On different occasions, historians have looked at International Relations Theory for insights and concepts to help understanding why and how the Cold War originated. While the postrevisionist paradigm was inspired by realism, for the last decade and a half, running parallel with broader theoretical developments in IR, large parts of the debate on the origins of the Cold War have focused on the role of ideas, ideology, and culture. However, the imported innovations had the effect of fragmenting our theoretical understanding of the origins of the Cold War, rather than offering a workable, coherent synthesis. Moreover, these accounts do not always sufficiently address problems of agency and causality. The debate on the origins of the Cold War, therefore, is in need of coherent theoretical frameworks which are capable of remedying these problems. This article argues that a possible way of generating such a framework is taking a closer look at hermeneutics and constructivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effect of the Cold War era on a historic event with serious consequences for Greece, namely the Greek Colonels' regime, which lasted between April 1967 and July 1974. Greece, due to its strategic position, served as guarantor of stability in NATO's southeastern flank, a benefit that the alliance considered indispensable to its strength, therefore impossible to compromise. In the light of this consideration, NATO tolerated, to put it mildly, the dictatorial, albeit pro-NATO regime that the Greek Colonels imposed on Greece on 21 April 1967. This paper will attempt to account for NATO's reactions to the Greek regime and the factors dictating them - a small, albeit indicative, peripheral segment of the puzzle of the global antagonism between the West and the East during the Cold War era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 5 May 1969 Finland launched its famous initiative, which led to the opening of multilateral negotiations for the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) three years later. To date there is widespread reasoning that the Finnish initiative was mainly an idea inspired by the Soviets. Based on new archival materials and interviews with contemporary witnesses, this article shows, however, that the Finns had their own good reasons to launch their appeal. The initiative was primarily designed to ease Soviet pressure on Finnish neutrality and to deal with the pending question of recognition of the two German states. The conference itself was for a long time not the main ambition of Finnish foreign policy. Offering Helsinki as a host to the talks and thereby making neutrality an indispensable condition for convening the security conference became the crown jewel in Finland's strategy towards the Soviet Union in the years 1969 to 1972. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes issue with American historians of the Cold War who assert that the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 endorsed the post-war division of Europe, and that its results were accidental or surprising. The article demonstrates that the nine members of the (then) European Community, with important support from neutrals and non-aligned, resisted strong pressure from Moscow and Washington to confirm the status quo. Instead, they ensured that the Final Act became an agenda for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observers of international relations frequently assume that human rights challenge realpolitik. This article shows that in the context of negotiations about European security in the early 1970s, the two went hand-in-hand. Despite significant transatlantic differences, Americans and Europeans conceptualized human rights as products of the Cold War, and principles for assuming more order and stability in the international system. Human rights discussions and agreements were not designed to end the Cold War in the 1970s. This analysis challenges assumptions about the absence of human rights in detente, and the alleged connection between the Helsinki Final Act and the Revolutions of 1989. The anti-Cold War quality of human rights activism in the 1980s was not present a decade earlier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Switzerland only played a marginal role in the Cold War, even though the small country was situated very close to the central battleground of any potential armed conflict in Europe the 'special role' that Switzerland played in the East-West conflict was closely linked to its policy of strict neutrality. Swiss Cold War historians have focused on the reasons for the emergence of Switzerland's 'special case' in foreign and security policy and on the consequences of this policy for the political, economic, military, and social relations between Switzerland and its international environment. With the launching of the Parallel History Project (PHP) at ETH Zurich in 1998, Switzerland has become the home of one of the major Cold War History networks. As a result, the findings of a new generation of Swiss Cold War historians are increasingly integrated into an emerging international history of the East-West confrontation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims at reviewing the historical production on the Cold War in Italy (both research and teaching activities). Some preliminary remarks deal with the Italian university system and the role some historical disciplines, especially the history of international relations, play in such a context. In Italy, historical studies on the Cold War had their origins in the 1970s mainly as a consequence of both the availability of US records and of the interpretations developed by US revisionist historians. In an early stage, Italian historians' attention focused on Italy's involvement in the Cold War and US policy towards Italy; some interpretations were influenced by the domestic political debate that characterized the 1970s. During the 1980s, owing to the development of Cold War studies in other western European nations and of growing contacts between Italian scholars and foreign historians, Italian historians' attention focused, not only on the Italian case, but also on various aspects of the Cold War history that led to the analyses of wider topics and to extensive research in foreign archives. After the end of the Cold War, there have been relevant changes in the approaches to the study of the Cold War developed by Italian scholars. Some historians went on focusing their attention on wider Cold War themes following the opening of archives; others shifted their attention to topics related to other historical areas, such as the history of the European integration or the history of the international organizations, although the Cold War was regarded as a useful background. The most interesting and innovative results have been offered through more sophisticated and complex analyses and interpretations of Italy's role in the Cold War, that, however, mainly for linguistic reasons, have scant impact on Cold War historiography. Inspite of that, historical production on the Cold War seems to experience a positive season that is characterized by new research projects, some interesting contributions and a lively debate that involves historians from different backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes West German Chancellor Erhard's vision of reunification and explores Soviet and American reactions to Bonn's opening gesture to Moscow, in 1964. The main argument is that despite Washington's reluctance, Erhard envisaged offering Khrushchev massive economic aid in exchange for more political liberty in the GDR, and eventually for reunification. Evidence suggests that Erhard's objective corresponded in time with Khrushchev rethinking his relations to the FRG. The Soviet leader secretly encouraged Erhard to present a realistic proposal for a modus vivendi and officially accepted the Chancellor's invitation to visit Bonn. However, due to Khrushchev's removal from power in October 1964, the final goals of his German policy remain uncertain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]