̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - totalitarianism

Exposing a Nazi: ̽��ֱ��exhibition destroying a myth

ta385 — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 07:00:00 +0000

In 1941, the Nazis banned Emil Nolde from painting, for life. For the past 50 years, many Germans have viewed him as the persecuted artist but now a major exhibition in Berlin, co-curated by a Cambridge historian, has shattered this myth and sent shock waves through the country.

Totalitarianism, violence and the silent majority

sjr81 — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 15:07:52 +0000

Her lecture ‘True Believers: Collaboration and Opposition under Totalitarian Regimes’ takes place at the Umney Theatre, Robinson College, tonight at 5pm.

Applebaum won the Pulitzer Prize for her 2004 book Gulag: A History, and is also the author of Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe, and Gulag Voices: An Anthology. Her most recent book is Iron Curtain: ̽��ֱ��Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956.

She said: “ ̽��ֱ��horrifying genius of Soviet communism - as conceived in the 1920s, perfected in the 1930s and then spread by force to Soviet-occupied Europe was the system's ability to get the silent majority in so many countries to play along without much protest.

“A small proportion of people protested and small proportion collaborated. But carefully targeted violence, propaganda and state's monopoly on economic and civic institutions persuaded the rest to go along. These techniques were used to great effect in Eastern Europe after 1945.”

Applebaum, who is currently Philip Roman Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics, a columnist for the Washington Post and Slate, is also a former Editor of ̽��ֱ��Economist, where she provided in-depth coverage of Eastern Europe before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Dr Rachel Polonsky, a lecturer at the Department of Slavonic Studies and organiser of tonight’s event, said: “We are proud to be hosting Anne Applebaum, whose work and life centre on the areas we study in the Department.

“As a historian of the twentieth century, Anne reminds us how intricately interwoven the political destinies and cultures of Russia, Ukraine and Poland have been, and how important it is to study them together. She is one of a series of high-profile lecturers (including the Polish intellectual Adam Michnik and the British historian Norman Davies) whose visits to Cambridge demonstrate the commitment of the ̽��ֱ�� to securing a future for Polish studies within the Slavonic Department, and the hope that this commitment will resonate outward to a wider public, both within and beyond the ̽��ֱ��.”

Head of Slavonic Studies, Dr Emma Widdis, said: “Our research and teaching in Ukrainian, Russian and in future, as we hope, Polish, reflect our sense of the importance of understanding this complex European 'neighbourhood', in which historical legacies remain politically contested. We are all very much looking forward to Anne’s talk this evening.”

Tonight’s talk at Robinson College is part of the CamCREES 2013 public lecture series, which also runs alongside a series of public lectures on Resistance in Russia and Eastern Europe.

Upcoming events in this series include:

'Resistance and Rights' on Thursday 7 March 2013, given by Professor Benjamins Nathans, ̽��ֱ�� of Pennsylvania
How and with what effects was the rhetoric of rights - the lingua franca of liberalism - deployed in an avowedly illiberal society like the Soviet Union? How do activists invoke rights in today's Russia? This lecture will analyse continuities and ruptures in the career of civil and human rights as a mode of resistance from the period of "developed socialism" to the Putin era.

'Resistance and Performance' on Thursday 25 April 2013, given by Dr John Freedman (writer, translator, critic, and scholar of Russian theatre)
Political resistance and social commentary are deeply ingrained in the Russian theatre tradition. Rarely, however, have they been as open and obvious as in recent years. Throughout the Soviet period (and Imperial era) theatre artists "spoke the truth" by way of metaphor and implication. This tended to remain true even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when artists, who achieved new freedoms, were more intent on creating new kinds of art than on speaking about social ills. But in one of the biggest breaks with tradition in the history of Russian theatre, some writers, directors and actors are currently becoming extremely outspoken in their works. This discussion will focus on current developments, putting them into a historical context.

'Resistance and Gender' on Thursday 2 May 2013, given by Dr Olesya Khomeychuk, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

̽��ֱ��‘horrifying genius’ of Soviet totalitarianism and its ability to control and quell protest will be examined tonight by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum.

̽��ֱ��horrifying genius of Soviet communism - as conceived in the 1920s, perfected in the 1930s and then spread by force to Soviet-occupied Europe was the system's ability to get the silent majority in so many countries to play along without much protest.

Anne Applebaum

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Cold War PR - spinning the ideological battlefront

sjr81 — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 12:56:45 +0000

Public Relations of the Cold War, organised by CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities) sought to examine the ‘selling’ of ideologically motivated policies to domestic audiences during the Cold War – outside of the more commonly studied area of public diplomacy, which concerns a government reaching out to foreign audiences.

̽��ֱ��conference, which drew experts from the UK, Europe, and North America and featured keynote addresses from Professor Christopher Andrew, Official Historian of the Security Service, and Professor Odd Arne Westad, a leading expert in Cold War history, aimed to demonstrate how pervasive the battle to influence domestic public opinion became – on both sides of the Cold War divide.

̽��ֱ��scope of influence was massive, whether it was Executive Branch infighting about how to best present casualty reports to the public during the Vietnam War to models of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) on sale in children’s toyshops. ̽��ֱ��conference also examined the under-recognized and -examined nuance in various means of disseminating PR.

American historian Hannah Higgin, one of the conference organisers, said: “In today’s PR-laden world, there are very important lessons to be learned by looking at how public relations influenced opinion, occupied governments and seeped into daily life and popular culture.

“And this wasn’t just practised by the USSR and USA. ̽��ֱ��conference has speakers discussing just how neutral Switzerland actually was, how Maoist thought and even the singing of ‘ ̽��ֱ��East is Red’ were among surgeon’s tools in China after the Sino-Soviet split, West Germany’s ‘reptile fund’ and how the work of George Orwell, via the medium of radio, was possibly as potent, if not a more potent, a weapon in the battle against Soviet totalitarianism as any CIA-funded or covertly-backed Cold War cultural enterprise abroad.

“This conference spurred a vital conversation about the channels and means by which governments ‘sold’ the Cold War to their own people - and how journalists, movie-makers, academics, researchers and the general public took up the ideological battle of their own volition.”

̽��ֱ��conference considered a range of controversial issues, including the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and the USA’s reporting of combat casualties in both the Vietnam and Korean Wars, and dissected how official policy was transmitted through the mass media.

In the latter case, the media often challenged official casualty statistics, charging that they underreported the actual total. In response, the Pentagon increasingly provided more detailed figures, to the consternation of Truman and particularly Johnson.

In the Soviet Union, the Brezhnev-era of tightly controlled reporting of the 'events' in Afghanistan gave way to the gradual liberalisation of media policy. Under glasnost, the dynamics of public debate could not be controlled by official institutions anymore and contributed to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.

Also up for discussion was the selling of the Cold War via the media by America’s ‘Crusade for Freedom’. Developed by the CIA, the Crusade was one of the longest-running and most intensive campaigns which saturated the American media with anti-communist sentiment for two decades.

̽��ֱ��paper, presented by Dr Ken Osgood from the Colorado School of Mines, looked at how such sentiment seeped effortlessly into art, literature, movies, music and politics. ̽��ֱ��Crusade had a particularly wide reach because of the extensive support it received from public relations professionals and the Advertising Council, as well celebrities—including, in one advert, a young Ronald Reagan, corporations and the mass media.

Added Higgin: “America’s battle against Communism touched everyday life through overt and covert means. Whether it was through ‘duck and cover’ (the famous public safety campaign) or Edward R Murrow, one of America’s most respected journalists, becoming the Director of the United States Information Agency in 1961, American culture was filled with subtle and not so subtle messages about how high the ideological stakes were.

“ ̽��ֱ��PR aspect of the Cold War has not been discussed in great depth before. Often domestic and foreign realms of history are studied in relative isolation. Further, people were living with Cold War PR until relatively recently. Now there is some historical distance. We need to understand more about what constitutes domestic PR, how it was—and is—disseminated, and how it was used as means of uniting—or trying to unite—the masses to a common purpose, and when and whether it is good, bad, or something else, for society.”

̽��ֱ��conference was funded by CRASSH as well as by the International History Dept at LSE and the History Faculty at Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��conveners of the conference were PhD students Hannah Higgin (History, Cambridge), Martin Albers (History, Cambridge), Mark Miller (History, Cambridge), and Zhong Zhong Chen (LSE).

̽��ֱ��persuasive powers of Cold War PR, until now little recognised or discussed, was the subject of a three-day conference at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��.

This conference spurred a vital conversation about the channels and means by which governments ‘sold’ the Cold War to their own people - and how journalists, movie-makers, academics, researchers and the general public took up the ideological battle of their own volition.

Hannah Higgin

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American toys for American boys and girls

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