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For the past two decades, Canadian international historians have largely missed the Cold War, or at least a significant portion of it. Certainly, there has been no shortage of studies of Canadian foreign policy featuring the bipolar struggle, and yet historians have largely confined their attention to Canada's admittedly crucial relationship with the United States, while Canadian–Soviet relations have been ignored. Indeed, in the historiography of Canada's Cold War international relations, the communist powers are largely missing. Hoping to challenge this limited focus, we frame our article around two Canada–US air defence exercises held in 1959 and 1960. While historians have viewed these exercises within the context of Canada's relationship with the United States, we highlight the wider Cold War framework in which Canadian policy was formed. After all, these exercises occurred during the mini-détente of the late 1950s and the collapse of the Paris summit in May 1960. As we demonstrate, the failure to take full account of the Cold War is a shortcoming of much of the writing on Canadian international relations, and so we offer an example of the need to take seriously Canada's foreign policy toward the communist bloc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on an article which examines the state of foreign relations 25 years after the Cold War. Topics discussed include the impact of the Cold War on the perspectives of historians and the relevance of the Cold War to 20th-century history. Also discussed are interpretations of the Cold War and of its geography.

Afghanistan's relations with the erstwhile Soviet Union began to take a specific direction in the wake of the British departure from the Subcontinent and with the creation of Pakistan in consequence of the partition of the subcontinent. The new orientation in Soviet-Afghan relations was due to the United States' reluctance to play the role which the British had been playing before its exit from the Subcontinent. Most of the ruling elites of Afghanistan were more inclined to the United States and very early sought to develop a nexus with America. However, US preferred Pakistan over Afghanistan and continued the policy during Cold War. Secondly, Pakistan played a significant role in pushing Afghanistan towards the Soviet Union as it exploited the Pashtunistan issue to its advantage. The Soviet Union utilized American reluctance, and alienation between Pakistan and Afghanistan and enhanced its political and military influence in Afghanistan so much so that the Soviet inspired communists managed successfully to overthrow the government of President Daoud in April 1978. The entry of Soviet military in Afghanistanpaved the way for the involvement of US which made Afghanistan a battlefield for prolong wars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the Eisenhower administration's strong support for the Pahlavi monarchy, tensions simmered under the surface of Mohammad Reza Shah's relationship with the United States throughout the 1950s. Following the Qarani coup attempt and the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958, the shah sought to diminish the Soviet threat to his regime and reduce his dependence on the United States by exploring Moscow's offer of a non-aggression treaty. Drawing on American, British, and Iranian sources, this article provides the first detailed history of these secret Soviet–Iranian negotiations that ended in disastrous failure for the shah in February 1959. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Iranian crisis of 1946 occupies a significant place in the early history of the Cold War. While this fact has been increasingly acknowledged by scholars, there remain aspects of the crisis, in particular the motivations of the major actors involved, which demand further exploration. This article reconsiders the roles of early Cold War actors, including the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union and Iran itself in the Azerbaijan crisis and offers a synthesis of different perspectives. In revisiting the crisis it draws upon Cold War and post-Cold War literature including recently available archival material. It aims to combine contributions from International Relations, the Cold War and Iranian history to offer a balanced and integrated narrative of events. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses Chinese refugees to the U.S. during the early part of the Cold War. The article examines the immigration of Chinese refugees to the U.S. from 1948 to 1966, how such immigrants assimilated into American life, and scholarly attention to such immigrants. The author argues that many Chinese refugees who immigrated to the U.S. during the early part of the Cold War enjoyed comparative advantages in assimilation due to what she calls the global imaginary of integration fostered by U.S. government agencies such as the State Department.

Since the end of the Cold War, most European nations – including those in Eastern Europe – have reassessed their role in the Holocaust. Although the Finnish scholarly community, as well as the wider public, is now beginning to participate in this process, Finland has been one of the last countries in Europe to recognize that it cannot assume a total immunity or innocence in this Europe-wide event. This article examines the ways in which the Holocaust has entered Finnish historiography over the last decades. Holmila and Silvennoinen's argument is two-fold. First, they hold that there are many contextual matters, such as the absence of visible anti-Semitism, which have for a long time worked as a sufficient barrier to keep Finland disconnected from the Holocaust. Second, they argue that there are important theoretical and methodological underpinnings, especially the so-called ‘separate war thesis’, which has been utilized as a convenient, if no longer tenable, explanation that Finland was very different from all other Axis nations. They also seek to point out the directions in which the Finnish scholarly community is now going in its search for a more nuanced approach to the Holocaust. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century evangelical missionaries were the primary American presence throughout Africa and much of the developing world. As the Cold War spread worldwide, and previously peripheral nations like Ethiopia achieved a new-found geopolitical significance, these religiously motivated Americans suddenly became significant players in the global conflict. While explicitly apolitical, many of these accidental diplomats nevertheless viewed the Cold War in essentially spiritually terms as a battle between 'Christian' America and the 'atheist' Soviet Union. It is not surprising, then, that while remaining neutral in word, between 1941 and 1960 the evangelical missionary community actively and successfully, if not always formally, promoted close ties between their own 'Judeo-Christian' nation and Ethiopia's Christian Emperor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada's self-image in world affairs has been as a bold internationalist, with its status and responsibility as a middle power and its role as a mediator emphasised. Assessments highlight the transformation of Canada's international relations after the Second World War and contrast its engagement in the United Nations with its performance at the League of Nations. Curiously, these appraisals ignore Canada's first term on the UN Security Council (1948-1949), particularly its response to crises which challenged world peace and the UN's authority. From an examination of unpublished and published papers in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, this article contends that Canada's performance did not correspond with the popular image of its role in world affairs, nor did the government take advantage of this exceptional opportunity to demonstrate its international commitment. Moreover, it also shied away from taking a leading part in advocating the ideals and objectives of the western alliance. Instead, it preferred to play a supporting role as the divisions of the cold war deepened. When the UN Security Council dealt with controversies and clashes, Canada followed the lead of the United States and the United Kingdom, and its priority was to maintain a common outlook and approach within the North Atlantic Triangle. Canada's early post-war foreign policy, as evident in its first term on the UN Security Council, seems remarkably consistent with its longstanding concerns and priorities in world affairs and considerably less indicative of any significant departure in approach or policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on popular political opinions held in the state of Guerrero, Mexico during the Cold War and considers the response to such ideologies by the government of Mexico. The author considers the political propaganda of the Mexican revolution of 1910-1920 and discusses how the government implemented social programs, democratic processes, and diplomatic relations with other Latin American countries. The author also considers the differences between government policies in urban and rural regions, the effect of the revolutions in Cuba and Chile on Mexico's social policies, how labor unions impacted the country's economy, post-World War II industrialization, and the campesinos of the Sierras in Guerrero.

This paper deals with J.B. Rudnyckyj (1910-1995), a leading Ukrainian émigré scholar of the Cold War period, and his manifold contributions to library science in Canada and the West in general. Although he was a philologist and lexicographer by training and profession, Rudnyckyj took a keen interest in all Ukrainian books and libraries to which he had access during this period. From his very immigration to Canada in 1949, he traveled extensively in this country, in the USA, and in Western Europe. Everywhere he went, he investigated local private Ukrainian, public, and academic libraries, museums, and cultural centres, met with resident scholars, both émigré and Western, and wrote about them in his voluminous publications. These included both travelogues with a strong cultural bent and also more formal library descriptions. For two decades he also compiled extensive yearly bibliographies of Slavic publications in Canada. Rudnyckyj's motivation, it seems, was a desire to document and preserve the Ukrainian cultural heritage which he thought was under threat in his ancestral European homeland. Today, all this material forms a valuable resource for the history of Slavic studies in Canada during the time of the "Long Cold War" (1945-1991). It also says much about Ukrainian culture in North America in general during this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay, which is part of an ongoing monographic study of the Société Européenne de Culture, looks at the SEC's relationship with Europe's communist intelligentsia during the first phase of the Cold War. European intellectual life during this period is generally associated with the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Yet the SEC, the membership of which included some of Europe's most eminent figures, ranging from Camus and Jaspers, to Adorno and Merleau-Ponty, to Lukács and Sartre, can be seen as having provided a reference point particularly for the European left, not least because of its unique openness to communist participation. Giving special attention to the Dialogue Est-Ouest (Venice, March 1956), one of the earliest encounters between Europe's eastern and western intellectuals since before the war, this essay considers how the SEC's engagement with contemporary Marxist theory there not only embedded the dialectic as the SEC's operational method. It also provided an early indication of that institution's imminent shift from a preoccupation with universal values to an awareness of cultural difference and diversity, as a result of the critique of current western liberal ideology and its cultures, undertaken by the SEC in light of the Thaw. [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]

This article analyzes the conflict that emerged regarding the so-called US-USSR “cultural contacts” during the Cold War within the exile community of American Latvians. While most of the American political and cultural elites saw cultural exchanges with the Soviets as beneficial, the reactions of the émigrés were much more controversial and polarizing. This study reveals the unrecognized side of the Cold War politics as experienced by the refugee groups. The study employs American, Latvian and Soviet publications, memoirs, interviews and archival materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several reports discussed at two conferences is presented including the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam, Germany and at the University of Glamorgan in Wales in April 2003. The focus of these conferences had been the political interrelationship between Great Britain and the German Democratic Republic, between different institutions and social groups within the framework of the Cold War.