Search

Begin New Search Topic Cold War Political Geography Cuba

1. On Sovereignties and Solidarities

Author:
Julio César Guanche Zaldívar and Sara Kozameh
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA)
Abstract:
The United States must abandon Cold War-era foreign policies and accept that Cuba is a sovereign nation free to define its political future— even if that means continuing socialism.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Cold War, Sovereignty, Socialism/Marxism, and Capitalism
Political Geography:
United States and Cuba

2. Dancing the Cold War: An International Symposium

Author:
Lynn Granola
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
David Caute, in The Dancer Defects, a wide-ranging volume about the Cold War struggle for supremacy in many realms of cultural activity, devotes his one chapter on dance to the high-profile defections that, beginning with Rudolf Nureyev’s “leap to freedom” in 1961, captured so many headlines. But as we will see in the next two days, there was more – far more – to the story than defections and far more even than ballet, although ballet certainly played a big part in Cold War battles for supremacy. Musicals like West Side Story and dances like the Twist belonged as much to the Cold War imaginary as events at the Bolshoi or the old Met that began with the playing of national anthems and even, on occasion, the display of national flags. Movie theaters and television were also battlegrounds, with millions of Americans tuning in to the Ed Sullivan Show for their first glimpse of real Russian dancers. Although the United States and the USSR were the main protagonists of the Cold War, they were not its only ones. The ideological struggle that was said to pit capitalist freedom against communist oppression took place on many fronts and involved allies, clients, and surrogates of those countries in different parts of the world. The two powers dueled at festivals in Africa, Western Europe, and the Middle East. Master teachers and choreographers were dispatched, and students sent to metropoles. Companies large and small embarked on long tours, spreading the gospel of dance along with a dose of ideology, earning foreign currency for their governments or budget relief for themselves, and contributing to the international visibility of the dance boom. Many breathed a sigh of relief when they returned home, but over the years the exposure to other repertories and other training regimes could be felt in the globalization of works, performance styles, and techniques. In the Cold War struggle for hearts and minds, people outside the corridors of power played a huge part. When the Moiseyev Dance Ensemble first toured the United States, the dancers were mobbed when they bought teddy bears for their children; Americans invited them home, believing that people-to-people diplomacy was the way to peace. Dancers were diplomats; in their dresses and pumps they met artists and dignitaries. They performed in opera houses and on improvised stages, giving full-scale performances and lecture- demonstrations – sometimes to people who had never glimpsed ballet or modern dance before, or witnessed performances by a company of African- American virtuosi. At a time before mass air travel, they traversed oceans and continents, encountered strange foods, languages, and customs. They became members of a global dance culture. The cultural Cold War has become a minor cottage industry. But when Naima Prevots published Dance for Export: Cultural Diplomacy and the Cold War in 1998, it was the first book to examine the phenomenon with respect to dance. Since then a number of scholars have followed in her footsteps, and several will be giving papers on their work at this symposium. Dancing the Cold War had its inception two years ago when the late and sorely missed Catharine Nepomnyashchy and I curated a symposium on Russian movement cultures of the 1920s and 1930s. The event was multidisciplinary in that it prominently featured both visual iconography and film. This time, in addition to film, photographs, and memorabilia, we will be hearing from dancers from ten US companies who took part in multiple Cold War tours, as well as Soviet-trained artists who have pursued post-Cold War careers outside Russia. We are also fortunate in being able to share Cold War images from the remarkable collection of Robert Greskovic and to show a film of Balanchine’s Western Symphony, specially loaned to us by the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which was made in Paris in 1956 with Cold War dollars. Tonight we begin with another Cold War film, Plisetskaya Dances, about the legendary Bolshoi ballerina, Maya Plisetskaya. It was made in 1964 by Moscow’s Central Documentary Film Studio and introduces us to the star who blazed so brightly over the international dance firmament. In Moscow she danced Swan Lake for innumerable foreign leaders, including Fidel Castro (shown on the symposium program and poster after a performance). Abroad she danced it to ecstatic crowds. We know from her memoir, I, Maya Plisetskaya, that her path was not easy. Her father was killed in the late 1930s, and she danced her first Dying Swan (or something that approximated it) at an outdoor concert in the city of Chimkent before an audience of political exiles, including her mother. She was denied permission to take part in the Bolshoi’s 1956 tour of London because one of her father’s brothers had settled in New York, had children, and grown prosperous. None of this appears in the film, of course. What you see instead is the magnificent Bolshoi ballerina, with her outsized temperament and splendid jumps, a dancer who had scaled the heights of international fame but remained at heart deeply Russian.
Topic:
Cold War, Arts, Culture, and Dance
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Eastern Europe, Soviet Union, Cuba, and North America

3. The impact of the 1949 Chinese Revolution on a Latin American Chinese community: shifting power relations in Havana’s Chinatown

Author:
Albert Manke
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional (RBPI)
Institution:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Abstract:
This article argues that, while initially constrained by U.S. Cold War policies both in the Americas and in Asia, China’s 1949 Communist Revolution could finally have a transformative impact on Latin American Chinese overseas community after the Cuban Revolution opened up new avenues for socialist influence in Latin America. By using new archival sources and interviews, we will analyze this changing impact by highlighting the intertwined layers of shifting power structures with a specific focus on the Chinese community in Cuba.
Topic:
Cold War, Communism, History, Diaspora, Revolution, and transnationalism
Political Geography:
China, Cuba, Latin America, and United States of America

4. Cuban Missiles and Operation Dragon Rouge

Author:
Robert Baker
Publication Date:
04-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
The 1962 Cuban missile crisis and 1964’s Belgian paratroop drop from U.S. C-130s in the Congo were the most interesting events in my five year intelligence career. Lowly intelligence analysts like me working for the U.S. Information Agency had to sit in the Director’s chair about three weekends every year as part of the job. Our building near the White House was almost empty on weekends. Nobody else was on duty except the front door guards and the cable/code room guys. If some critical action telegram came in during Saturday or Sunday, my job was to phone the Director on his red, secure phone immediately, wherever he might be.
Topic:
Cold War, Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, and Memoir
Political Geography:
Soviet Union, Cuba, Caribbean, North America, and United States of America

5. Zero: The Surprising and Unambiguous Policy Relevance of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Author:
James Blight and Janet M. Lang
Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
Herman Kahn was one of the most eminent nuclear strategists of the early Cold War period. He advised Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy while working at the RAND Corporation, and also wrote one of the most controversial bestsellers of the era, Thinking about the Unthinkable (1962). Reading it is shocking, even today, as one encounters concepts Kahn made famous, like megadeath (a nuclear war killing tens or hundreds of millions of people); escalation dominance (ultimately threatening to blow up the world if an adversary does not relent); the doomsday machine (US-Soviet nuclear arsenals that, if used in a war, would blow up the world, no matter what leaders might desire); and use 'em or lose 'em (striking first in a nuclear war might be advantageous, if the enemy's forces are totally destroyed before he can launch his weapons). No wonder the title role in Stanley Kubrick's black satiric film about the end of the world, Dr. Strangelove (1964), is reportedly based on the real Herman Kahn. But Kahn himself always said he was merely being realistic, facing directly the terrifying new reality created by the existence of the ultimate weapon.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Cold War, Nuclear Weapons, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
Cuba

6. Latin America: Then Now

Author:
Luis Moreno Ocampo, Susan Segal, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Carlos Chamorro, Enrique Krauze, Alma Guillermoprieto, and Dolores Huerta
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Reflections on a changing hemisphere.
Topic:
Cold War, Development, Government, and Human Rights
Political Geography:
Cuba and Latin America

7. Special Report No. 205: Why We Should Still Study the Cuban Missile Crisis

Author:
Michael Dobbs
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
Some scholars have questioned the utility of studying the Cuban missile crisis as a model for executive decision making during times of crisis, arguing that it offers little guidance for policymakers today. Many accounts of the missile crisis are incomplete, inaccurate, and too narrowly focused on the “rational actors” at the center of the drama while overlooking the “irrational actors.” Nonetheless, the Cuban missile crisis remains the best-documented study of presidential decision making at a time of supreme national danger. It offers policymakers and students of history unique insights into the interplay between the debates in the Oval Office and fast-moving events in the rest of the world. For decades, the Cuban missile crisis has been studied and analyzed as a case study in presidential power and crisis management. It is better understood as an example of the limits of presidential power and the haphazard returns of crisis management. The missile crisis illustrates the sometimes pivotal role of personality in politics. Had someone else been president in October 1962, the outcome could have been very different.
Topic:
Cold War, International Political Economy, and Nuclear Weapons
Political Geography:
United States and Cuba