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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3sfu7q/why_is_their_a_relatively_small_african_diaspora/ | 3sfu7q | 44 | t3_3sfu7q | Why is their a relatively small African diaspora population in the Middle East despite the fact that the Arab slave trade brought millions of Black slaves from Africa to the Arab world for more than a thousand years? | The US recieved less than a million black slaves, yet in a few hundred years African Americans number 40 million plus and they makeup a large proportion of the US population. The Arab slave trade went on for much longer and from the many sources ive read, they enslaved considerably more blacks during its 1000 year history, some have put the figure of blacks enslaved between 20 to 80 million yet they are underrepresented in the middle east. Why is their such a small African diaspora population in the Arab world considering the Arab slave trade lasted longer and enslaved considerably more blacks than the Transatlantic slave trade?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade#Africa:_8th_through_19th_centuries | 536 | 0.9 | null | false | 1,447,269,223 | [
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"body": "I'm not particularly qualified to discuss the Middle East and the Arab slave trade (it's not a comparative I've ever worked with and so my knowledge of the scholarship is too lacking) - but I would like to address your remarks about the United States and the transatlantic trade, because I think that you're operating under a few misunderstandings about the scope and scale of that trade, which in turn is making your point of comparison perhaps a little flawed.\n\nYou are correct in saying that less than a million Africans came to the United States on slave ships. An estimated minimum of 473,000 left Africa and some 389,000 arrived between 1628 and 1860. There are two very, *very* big caveats to those figures however. The first is that the trade to the United States represents only a tiny portion of the *overall* transatlantic slave trade; all in all, from 1501 to 1866, some 11million men, women and children survived the journey from Africa to the New World. Of these, 2.3million were trafficked to the British Caribbean - some of who were later sold on to the United States. Most however were taken to Portugese colonies in Brazil - an estimated 4.7million people, or an average of 15,000 people every year, arrived in Brazil from Africa during the course of the transatlantic slave trade. The Spanish made a good go of the slave trade, too, successfully transporting 1.3million souls to their colonies by 1866; the figures for the French Caribbean are around 1.1million by 1831.\n\nSo it should be apparent, then, that the United States - and the continental colonies that preceded them - are rather exceptional in how *few* slaves that they received directly from Africa in the transatlantic trade, despite a thriving domestic institution of slavery. And if we look to Brazil today, which was far and away the biggest recipient of slaves from the transatlantic trade, we find a Black Brazilian population group that constitutes 7.6% of the estimated total, compared to nearly 13% in the United States, excluding individuals of (identified) mixed heritage. Put in more striking terms, Brazil's black-identified population is roughly three times the number of African slaves brought there directly, whilst the United States' is well more than one-hundred times that number. So rather than asking how it is possible for the Middle East to have a relatively small diaspora of Africans despite a vibrant slave trade in contrast to the US, it would perhaps be better to switch your perspective and interrogate how it is the United States has such a large diaspora despite a *small* share of the trade. If your thesis about the numbers involved were correct (and /u/Commustar has addressed that in his post), it is in fact the USA, not the Middle East, which is remarkable.\n\nPart of the answer to that question lies in the other misunderstanding I think you have about the dynamics of slavery in the United States and the role of the trade. Something that many people struggle to realise, particularly because of how slavery is represented in American popular culture, is that by the time of the USA's independence, the days of the transatlantic slave trade being essential to the growth of North American slavery had long since passed. The transatlantic trade was much more of a British enterprise than an American one; so much so that during the Revolutionary War, the future United States had suspended all of its participation in the transatlantic trade in a bid to undermine the British economy, future slave states included. It was never restored to its pre-war levels and banned in 1807. Yet according to the US census, whilst the slave population grew by roughly 245,000 in the last decade before the slave trade was finally killed at the federal level, it grew by almost 400,000 in the decade *after* abolition. Put another way: from 1790 to 1810, the slave population increased by an average of 22,000 souls a year. Yet from 1810 to 1830, it grew by 43,000. And if we look at that pre-1810 increase, we see most of it doesn't actually come from the transatlantic trade: the slave trade arrival estimates suggest only 20 - 25% of that 22,000 yearly increase can be accounted for in the form of newly arrived African slaves.\n\nInstead, the remarkable thing about the United States was that it was developing its own internal, domestic slave trade - with states that had a perceived surplus of slaves feeding states that had a need for them. This was a trade that flowed in the post-independence period from the Upper South to the Lower South; and it was a trade that moved many, many more people than the transatlantic trade to the US ever did. States like Virginia, which had an abundance of slave labour relative to its economic needs, could sell their 'extra stock' down to a state like Georgia, where the constant expansion of cash crop farming creating an ever-growing demand for new labour. In particular, the invention of the cotton gin - which facilitated an explosion in cotton production from just 1.5million pounds in 1790 to 35million by 1800, up to an astounding 2.3billion by 1860 (see Bailey in *Agricultural History* 68:2, 1994) - provided the impetus for such a massive expansion of labour-intense farming in the Lower South.\n\nBy inference then we can establish something else remarkable and important in understanding why the United States has such a sizeable African American minority: it had a slave population that reproduced itself on a large and meaningful scale. All manner of factors contributed to this possibility - the United States did not have the same challenges with land availability for slave or free black communities as Barbados to work and inhabit independently, for instance. But the fundamental thing that made it possible was that slavery in the United States was not geared near exclusively towards high-intensity farming in the same way that the colonies of the British Caribbean were (though the picture of the Caribbean as a series of perpetual death camps is quite inaccurate; the slave population in the Caribbean did, in fact, reproduce organically, just not nearly as substantially), and the structure of slave life was more conducive to the forming of sexual and romantic partnerships and family units, particularly in the Upper South where farming operations were less intense. Even in the Lower South, the incentives were obvious for planters to try and facilitate natural population growth.\n\nRemarkable, too, is the ideology that grows up around slavery in the United States - specifically, the ideology of race. In the US we see the emergence of an ideological framework that stands out in comparison to the rest of the world for two reasons: firstly, more than anywhere else in the world, the US feels the need to construct an aggressively pro-slavery ideology. For many southern slave-holders defending the institution post-independence, slavery was not a necessary evil or simply a benign institution - it was a good, thoroughly just and righteous institution that actually *uplifted* black people, who were held to be inherently lesser and in need of a firm hand to guide them. The South was not a society with slaves; it was a *slave society*. Which ties directly into the second point - the rigidity of race in the US.\n\nWhilst questions of race are complex and nuanced wherever you go in the world, conceptions of race became - and still are - unusually rigid in the United States. I've just written a commentary [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3sb7io/since_we_know_african_slaves_were_shipped_to/cwwz32t) about the legacy of slavery on the racial dynamics of the British Caribbean that you might find interesting as a point of contrast, to see what you can detect in the way of similarities and differences. Very clear distinctions were created in the US between black and white, with all kinds of implications attached to them; this rigid barrier existed not only during slavery but in the institutions of segregation and anti-miscegenation that followed. Whereas Caribbean societies evolved to have highly complex, nuanced and contradictory ideas of what 'black' and 'white' implied - ideas that intersected with culture, language, religion, education, gender, sexuality and more - popular conceptions of racial hierarchy in the US arguably never became quite so fluid or nuanced. If a black woman had a child by a white man, the child was almost always seen as black in the US.\n\nThus the United States has historically been less able to facilitate interracial reproduction, and less willing to recognise - legally or culturally - the mixed heritage of children born to interracial families, particularly when they more obviously inherit the traits of a black parent. In contrast, the Caribbean has a rich history of having distinct mixed race classes and identities, as does South Africa (which implicitly recognised and legitimised such identities in its own very rigid racial framework during apartheid). And when we look to Brazil, we see that although the actual Black Brazilian population is quite small relative to the US, the percentage of people who identify as *mixed race* is much, much larger - more than 40% of the population I believe, of who a massive chunk attribute that mixed status to African heritage. So I suspect something similar happened with the descendants of African slaves from the Arab slave trade. In the absence of that rigid, racialised ideology, it stands to reason that it would have been significantly easier for their ethnic footprint to be lost through intermarriage, particularly given that manumission would have been *much* easier than in the USA.\n\nIn a nutshell then, it is probably the USA, not the Middle East, that is remarkable. Whilst I'm aware it doesn't do much to address your questions about the Arab trade, I do hope I've been able to shed some light on the comparative.\n\n(Estimate figures from the Transatlantic Slavetrade Database)",
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"body": "First off, let's tackle the question of numbers of enslaved.\n\n> some have put the figure of blacks enslaved between 20 to 80 million \n\nWho gives those numbers? Or where did you find them? In the wikipedia article that you cite, numbers between 8 and 17 million are used throughout.\n\nAdditionally, we need to also realize that not all people who were subjected to the Arab Slave Trade were destined to be sent to the Middle East. [This table shows*](https://books.google.com/books?id=dXVFnHqhLvcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=transformations+in+slavery&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAGoVChMImaqS7KeJyQIVyjk-Ch3ZYgqa#v=onepage&q&f=false) that for the East African coast in the 19th century, about as many slaves stayed in East Africa as were sent anywhere else. Also of note is an estimated death toll of 9% for slaves sent overseas, which would mean even fewer Africans reaching the Middle East in the 19th century.\n\nAlso, I would ask how you define the Middle East? Are you including or excluding North Africa? For example, Egypt has a large population of Nubian origin, former President Anwar el-Sadat being one notable example.\n\n*That table shows exports to the middle east as well as to South Africa and the Atlantic. Thus, it is not solely representing the Arab Slave trade but the Atlantic Slave trade as well.",
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"body": "This is absolutely a question in need of more research. The Wikipedia article offers only one citation on the African trade (fn 94 gives aggregate numbers, but it doesn't specify what was actually being totaled), whereas the other citations are only about defining geography without supporting the claims that people were being traded there.\n\nThat's not to say that the trans-Saharan trade didn't exist. The trans-Saharan slave trade was in continuous operation from antiquity until the 20th century. A high estimate for the years 1400-1900 is 14-15 million Africans. A more conservative estimate, but spanning the longer years 600-1500, is 5.5 million slaves. For further discussion, I'd recommend the superb overview by [Anne Haour](http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.5871/bacad/9780197264782.003.0004).\n\nThat's significantly less than the 20-80 million your sources propose, but the observation remains valid: How did less than a million black slaves generate such a prominent portion of the US population today, while 5-15 times that number seem to have had little effect on the demographics of the Middle East?\n\nIt's a hard question to answer, in part because modern definitions of slavery are so mixed up with notions of race. What makes it more complicated, however, is that the medieval texts that record interregional slave trade seem to adopt racial terms. A classic example is the [Zanj rebellion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanj_Rebellion), as cited by /u/rule2DoubleTap, which occurred in the 800s in modern Iraq. Although \"Zanj\" today is usually thought to mean black Africans and was possibly related to the word Zanzibar, it was used more flexibly during the middle ages.\n\nIt's pretty clear that the dominant part of the Zanj revolt included slaves or freedmen who could trace their families to East Africa. However, a close read of the sources also turns up people like a Byzantine slave named Qirtās, who was certainly not of African descent. (His name actually sounds Slavic to me, which would fit in well with what we know about the Eastern European slave trade at that time.) Moreover, it seems like the Zanj had a good number of peasants among their ranks. This fits in well with what we know about early Islamic society: manumission was frequent, and there was a lot of social mobility. For example, in the early 700s, Yazid ibn Abi Habib, the son of a Nubian captive, became Egypt's top legal authority.\n\nThat's probably where the answer to your question lies. Black slaves were not thought of as being essentially or existentially black slaves. They could and often were freed, and their free descendants could mix freely with the populations already living in the Middle East. In contrast, slavery was highly racialized in the US, and even after abolition, racial thought continued to determine how people perceived and lived in the world around them (as noted by /u/CommustarMo).",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1sxs8r/ama_central_africa_colonization_independence/ | 1sxs8r | 99 | t3_1sxs8r | AMA - Central Africa: Colonization, Independence, Genocide and Beyond | Welcome to this AMA which today features four panelists willing and eager to answer all your questions on the modern history of Central Africa. **The 20-year rule will be relaxed for this AMA.** Please note that the rules against soapboxing and bigotry still stand.
Our panelists are:
* /u/gplnd [Modern Central Africa | U.S. Cold War Foreign Policy](#flair-africa): My interests lie mainly in the Great Lakes region during the 20th century, with an emphasis on Rwanda, Burundi and Congo. My current work focuses on political parties in late colonial Rwanda, but I'm also interested in issues of "ethnicity" and conflict more broadly. The Congo Crisis is also of interest to me, particularly with regard to American foreign relations. And I'd be happy to answer questions about the Rwandan genocide and subsequent Congo wars.
* /u/seringen [Modern Africa | Genocide](#flair-africa): I'm working on a book on Central African genocide right now which has made me an expert on genocides (but not holocaust focused). Most of my training is in modern political economy with a strong interest in arts and technological history as they pertain to the modern economy. I can definitely speak to modern theories on genocide and statehood, and more largely about historiography of the region. **/u/seringen will be joining us a little later.**
* /u/EsotericR [African Colonial Experience](#flair-africa): I've mainly read around the colonial history (including the direct pre-colonial and post-colonial) history of central africa. This includes the modern-day countries of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Mozambique, Tanzania and most countries in between. I also have read extensively on decolonization across the whole continent.
* /u/Bernardito [Moderator | Modern Guerrilla | Counterinsurgency](#flair-moderator): Force Publique 1914-1945 in the Belgian Congo as well as the insurgency in Angola 1961-1974 (alongside Portuguese counterinsurgency).
Let's have your questions! | 122 | 0.91 | moderator | false | 1,387,124,522 | [
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"body": "Sorry, second question for u/gplnd or u/serigen - As a Canadian should I be proud of the work done by Romeo Dallaire? Are there any misconceptions that are widely believed or things that should blemish his record that are overlooked? ",
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"body": "1. From what I know of Congolese history, Belgium did not intend to release the Congo in 1960. What made them suddenly change their mind in 1960?\n\n2. What role did Mobutu play in bringing some form of stability and unity after the Congo Crisis?\n\n3. Mobutu's regime had survived for 30 years before it began to waver and collapse. What changed that allowed his overthrow to be possible?\n\n4. Why exactly did Mobutu side with the Hutu during the Rwandan Genocide?",
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"body": "In discussing ethnicity in Africa how man of the divisions along \"tribe lines\" (pardon the outdated term I'm not sure of the current terminology) are partly a product of the European colonial administration?\n\nI've heard that many \"tribes\" were artificially created concepts partly as a result of Victorian anthropology, partly as a result of deliberate colonial policy of creating controllable political units. That said I'm also aware that there was a huge variety of different ethnic groups in Africa.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/j5lozz/jewishblack_relationships_before_and_during_the/ | j5lozz | 4 | t3_j5lozz | Jewish-Black relationships before and during the civil rights movement | Hi there! I’m a high school student who is currently writing a senior paper on Jewish history. The topic I’m specifically writing on is the relationship between Jews and African Americans during the civil rights movement and immediately prior. Some questions I’m hoping to answer are—were jews majority pro or anti the civil rights movement? What actions did they take to further or halt the movement? Did the Jewish experience with oppression add to the Jewish motivation in the movement? What did the public think of the Jewish impact in the movement?
Currently I’m in the stage of reading my sources and taking notes on them. My sources are listed below:
Clark, Kenneth B. “Candor about Negro-Jewish Relations.” Commentary 2, no. 2 1946: 8-14.
Dinnerstein, Leonard. “American Jews and the Civil Rights Movement.” Reviews in American History 30, no. 1, 2002: 136-140. doi:10.1353/rah.2002.0008.
Dinnerstein, Leonard. "Southern Jewry and the Desegregation Crisis, 1954–1970." American Jewish Historical Quarterly 62, no. 3, 1973: 231-41. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23877999.
Fiebert, Martin. “Collaboration and Conflict. Five Phases in Jewish and Black Relations: An Examination of Tensions Between the Two Communities from before the Civil War to the Late 1990's.” International Review of Social Sciences and Humanities no. 1, 2011: 90-121.
Friedman, Murray. What Went Wrong?: The Creation & Collapse of the Black-Jewish Alliance. New York: The Free Press, 1995.
Glazer, Nathan. “Negroes and Jews: The New Challenge to Pluralism.” Commentary 38, no. 6, 1964.
Hardy, Rachel. “African American – Jewish Relations in the 1960s: Struggling to find Common Ground.” Charleston: College of Charleston. Chrestomathy 10, no. 8, 2011: 1-26.
Kristol, Irving. “The Political Dilemma of American Jews.” Commentary Magazine, 1984.
Lang, Kurt and Lang, Gladys Engel. “Resistance to School Desegregation: A Case Study of Backlash Among Jews.” Sociological Inquiry 35, 1965: 94-106. doi:10.1111/j.1475-682X.1965.tb00593.x
Mohl, Raymond A. "‘South of the South?’ Jews, Blacks, and the Civil Rights Movement in Miami, 1945-1960." Journal of American Ethnic History 18, no. 2 (1999): 3-36. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27502414.
Schultz, Debra L. Going South: Jewish Women in the Civil Rights Movement. New York: New York University Press, 2001.
Svonkin, Stuart. Jews Against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties. New York City, New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
I’m posting here with a few questions I’m struggling to answer, and with my school on break, my professor is unavailable.
1. Some sources are hidden behind a paywall, specifically for me, Commentary Magazine and some JSTOR articles. How can I access them without paying because my professor specifically noted to not pay the paywall on this assignment.
2. What is the most effective note taking strategy for these sources?
3. Are there opinions I should have prior to thoroughly reading these or do I go in without prior convictions?
Thank you so much in advance Historians of reddit!!! | 3 | 0.67 | null | false | 1,601,912,514 | [
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fh6ckw/why_did_the_confederate_states_have_fewer_men/ | fh6ckw | 6 | t3_fh6ckw | Why did the Confederate states have fewer men than the Union did during the American Civil War and was it actually possible for the South to beat the North? | We are going over the American Civil War in my history class and it seems like in almost every battle we’ve gone over the Confederates have been outnumbered by some significant margin.
Wouldn’t the Confederates actually have more men since they could leave their jobs and farms for awhile and rely on slaves to do the work?
I get that the Confederates probably couldn’t draft/recruit African Americans since a lot of them would probably try to desert or get to the Union’s armies. Plus they relied on African Americans for their economy to keep functioning.
According to my history teacher the Union had a much larger manpower pool that allowed Ulysses S. Grant to occasionally make it a war of attrition. Additionally my teacher said the only reason the south wasn’t beaten sooner was because Robert E. Lee was such a good general.
Sorry if this gets asked frequently.
TL;DR Why was the South so outnumbered by the North? Was it really due to the fact that the North could recruit African Americans or was there another big factor in it? Also, why did my history teacher make it sound like the South only survived as long as it did because of Robert E. Lee? Was the Union significantly more powerful than the Confederacy? | 9 | 0.92 | null | false | 1,583,968,252 | [
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"body": "You're definitely right about this one getting asked pretty frequently, but I'm not a smart enough wiki to be able to link to all the related articles, so I'll try to shift some for your teacher.\n\nPopulation density and urbanization are probably two of the key factors in determining the manpower shortage of the South. The southern states did not urbanize at a similar rate to those of the North post Independence. While some southern historians have pointed to the economic importance of Charleston and New Orleans as evidence of the southern urban core, I have always found this argument weak when compared to the network of towns found in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania at the same time. The two port cities acted as a clearing house for the agrarian products of the south, but did no encourage the same level of guild participation, working fraternal orders, and other significant late 18th century signs of the new 'middling' class of the First Industrial Revolution. \n\nThe southern plantation owners had vast tracts of land and slaves to work them, leaving poor whites to live on the periphery of southern society. Some free middling whites might take on roles in local government such as sheriff or later in the period mechanics and other late industrial tasks, but the plantation strove to be self sufficient with things such as bakeries, blacksmiths, and other facilities existing on the plantation itself. Essentially what we can say is that the agrarian ideal of the plantations led to a lack of free people not directly participating in the plantation economy and thereby not leading to increased urbanization and population growth. \n\nThe north did not have this system for the most part and farms were smaller as a result. The new west states such as Michigan and Ohio were settled by small holders which meant land ended up distributed in more hands which again would lead to population growth as the farms became viable. Immigrants entering the United States would come in search of cheap available land and jobs and would find both of these mostly in the North.\n\nThe South generally had the most experienced and highly trained officers because it was a tradition for the elite of the south to attend military academies and participate in the American armed forces. Interestingly it was not as common in the American Navy which fielded a much higher number of competent Northern officers. Lee was considered an exceptionally brilliant commander as was 'Stonewall' Jackson. Their counterparts in the form of a Burnside, Hooker, or McClellan were far less capable. I am also a firm believer that the North approached the war with kid gloves in the outset and that actions such as the burning of the Shenandoah and Sherman's scorched earth policy(too late I know) would have helped sap the Southern states ability to feed itself and forced it to capitulate earlier. The truth is that Historians and I believe a policy of this group is not to speculate on the coulda, woulda, shoulda, of history.\n\nThe South lost the civil war for several reasons:\n1) Tactically. In the end the South lost because of the effectiveness of the Anaconda plan to choke it's ability to move its products abroad and pay for the war. It eventually lost on the battlefield due to attrition and in some places incompetence especially in the Western theatre. Grant's siege of Richmond was successful and Lee's assault on Pennsylvania was not. Many actions can be pointed to as \"heroic\" as commanders attempted to slow down Union advances in Georgia and Tennessee, but were ineffective at stopping them.\n2) Economics - The southern system was outdated and could not produce an economic base from which to supply an army with the necessary industrial equipment of the newly developing shape of warfare. Southern plantations weren't so economically viable as to afford rifled cannons, ironclad 'monitors', repeating rifles, torpedos(mines)...bla bla in the same capacity as an industrialized and urbanized polity like the North. They tried, and their examples are held up as ingenuity, gritty determination, and overcoming the odds. No one really ever says that about Springfield Mass. producing literally 100's of thousands of high quality weapons until the finally days of the war.\n3)Politically - Outside powers, especially England did not recognize the South. The concept of an agrarian state sitting alongside the USA may have seemed like a good idea at one point in the relationship, but India was in direct competition with Alabama for the cotton mills in the UK at the same time. The concept of slave ownership was dipping below the horizon in most European political discourse. It was the death rattle for this system that a century prior had been quite widespread. \n\nGood Pop-History that influenced this \n'White Trash' - by Nancy Isenberg\n'Confederates in the Attic' - by Tony Horwitz\n\nSadly the rest of my library is in storage.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/h13yg5/question_about_libertadores_simon_bolívar_and/ | h13yg5 | 4 | t3_h13yg5 | Question about Libertadores , Simon Bolívar and Jose de San Martin | Just a little background, I am of caribbean decent and ive been studying South American history and such and one thing that stuck out to me is the demographics of SA. The mix seems to be African, European and Native American but I noticed this massive difference in the demographic of the countries these two liberated. So in Simon case Colombia, Venezuela, Panama,Ecuador and Bolivia. The population with direct African heritage is much higher especially in Colombia (which was also the biggest port for Spain in the Caribbean at those times) so I can see how other factors play in to population demographic. but it’s the same in Panama and Venezuela and Bolivia which is the least amount but still notable. Let me also note that I’m not mentioning the countless people who don’t know there heritage but claim to have African or European heritage mulattos and mestizos.
Now compare that to San Martin’s Argentina, Peru and Chile. Those counties African- heritage population is almost nonexistent. Argentina and Uruguay tried to remove the African/darker population. (Look up Tango) you’ll see that in Argentina and I’ll go as far to say all of South America deep seated beliefs, behaviors and culture stems from Africa even more so than Europe. Especially when it comes to music, dance, food. I can’t find significant info on Chile but I give them the benefit of doubt considering how far the country is from the Atlantic coast.
So basically I’d like to stem the discussion of what drove the mentality of these colonies at the time to have completely different demographics and was it forged by the mentality of their liberators? Maybe one was looking for a more European nationalistic mentality even though they were independent. While the other was trying get away from that mentality. | 7 | 0.9 | null | false | 1,591,897,103 | [
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"body": "Myself and /u/Legendarytubahero has written about this previously in [this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c1mkd8/black_argentines_uruguayans_and_chileans_where/), speaking specifically about the case of Afro-Argentines and Afro-Chileans.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/f5nmxn/can_anyone_tell_me_about_africanamerican_sailors/ | f5nmxn | 5 | t3_f5nmxn | Can anyone tell me about African-American sailors on whaling ships in the early nineteenth century? | I'd pretty much be interested in anything you happened to know: were there any? If so were there many? Did they face discrimination (I believe black sailors in the Royal Navy at that time mostly had to work as cooks, and other lesser paid work)? Were any slaves? Are there any notable examples? Also, in honour of the black history theme, how about black sailors in general (African? Carribean?) on American ships?
When I say 'early 19th century', I'd be more interested the closer the information is to the 1810s, but I'm not too fussed if it's a long time later or earlier. | 13 | 1 | null | false | 1,582,008,297 | [
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"body": "That sounds like a worthy topic for a book. Conveniently, someone has already written one: *Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail* by W. Jeffrey Bolster. It's also discussed in *The Many-Headed Hydra* by by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, although I can't really recommend that book.\n\nBut while you are waiting to get *Black Jacks* from your nearest library, I can endevour to answer some of your questions. Yes, there were African-American sailors, and plenty more sailors on American vessels that were African but not American. Many were enslaved, but most were free. The enslaved sailors mostly served on \"coaster\" vessels in the South, because it's very difficult to keep a sailor from \"jumping ship\" whenever it makes port, and in the North as well as most of Europe, an enslaved sailor that escaped into the port city was never going to be returned to the slaveowner. Only in the South (and the Caribbean, while slavery was practiced there) could a slave not disappear into the city and become free. \n\nAs for notable examples, the one that springs to mind is Robert Smalls. There's plenty of articles about him online if you wish further reading, but in short he was a slave who became a pilot and helmsman in the Charlotte, NC harbor. When the Civil War broke out, he was working on the *CSS Planter*, a small Confederate Navy cargo ship. One night when the (white) officers were ashore, he and the rest of the (enslaved) crew loaded their families aboard the *Planter* and sailed out of the harbor and surrendered the ship and themselves to the Union blockade force. He went on to have more Civil War adventures and then a post-war business and political career. \n\nAs for whaling specifically, there were many African-American sailors on them, and they generally had the same duties and responsibilities as other hands, although I'm not aware of any of them becoming officers. (I'm not saying it didn't happen, I just can't recall any examples.) I'm not aware of any being slaves, and in fact I doubt it strongly because the American whaling industry was dominated by New England Quaker families, and abolition ran strong in their communities. But so did greed, and that lead to an unfortunate side of the whaling industry. \n\nThe importation of slaves into the USA was banned in 1808. Subsequently, the legal increase in the slave population was by reproduction. But it was still very profitable to import new slaves from Africa. It was difficult to do so in a typical cargo ship, though, because it takes special accoutrement to transport slaves. Normally a cargo ship has large empty holds below deck for convenience in loading and unloading; a slave ship needs multiple low wooden decks in the hold, the better to pack in sufficient human cargo to turn a profit. Second, a ship's galley was sufficient to cook food for the crew of perhaps one or two dozen, but there was no way it could produce sufficient cooked food for hundreds of slaves. Slave ships carried a large cauldron to boil of sufficient food, and such a cauldron was too large to hide and had no legal purpose on a cargo vessel. Except... a whaling ship made its money from whale oil. That whale oil was rendered out of whale blubber on board by means of, guess what, a large cauldron (or two). Plus, a whaling ship would leave port with lots of sawn wood, that during a whaling voyage the ship's carpenter would turn into barrels to hold the oil they gained. But that wood could just as easily be turned into the internal decking necessary to hold slaves. The final thing needed was the chains to secure the slaves, but those could be purchased at the slave trading forts, although for a much higher price. For all those reasons combined, most of the illegal slave importation by American ships between 1808 and 1860 was on whaling ships.\n\nFinally, circling back to whaling, by the 1800s whaling voyages typically lasted several years and covered thousands of miles. They would pick up additional crew as needed at any port they happened to be at, and thus whaling ships ended up as a motley mix of men. There's documentary evidence of it, because every ship leaving an American port for a whaling voyage had to submit a \"List of Persons\" document to the customs house, which listed all the crew by name, place of birth, places of residence, age, height, complexion, and hair color. Races can be inferred from the listed complexions: people we would consider white are called \"fair\" or \"dark\", while blacks were \"mulatto\" or \"black\" and asians were \"yellow\".",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4y1739/rules_roundtable_17_periodization_and/ | 4y1739 | 43 | t3_4y1739 | Rules Roundtable #17: Periodization and Regionalization | Hello everyone and welcome to the 17th installment of our continuing series of [Rules Roundtables](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/meta#wiki_rules_discussion)! This project is an effort to demystify the subreddit and also to gather your feedback to help improve it! We aren't just covering the hard and fast rules though, but also looking at other aspects of the subreddit and the community. This week, we're looking at periodization and regionalization, and how to ask better questions even if you don't have much of a historical background.
#Periodization/Regionalization
Periodization and regionalization refer to a practice of history and archaeology in dividing up time and space into classificatory units (“periods” and “regions”, respectively). This practice is in some ways fundamental to the way history and archaeology as disciplines are structured, dividing up university department and academic journals into regional and period specializations. Additionally, periodization and regionalization are important for how research is conducted. While many are broadly familiar with the concepts of periodization and regionalization as they are taught in primary education or interpreted in popular culture, the intent of this post is to present a more academic and rigorous view of these concepts with the goal of helping you, dear reader, ask better questions in /r/AskHistorians. Having a better understanding of periodization and regionalization **can not only help ensure that your answer doesn't get deleted**, *but also increase the chances that you receive an /r/AskHistorians-quality answer.*
##What is the purpose of Periodization and Regionalization?
Classification of space and time is a fundamental endeavor of history and archaeology because it helps to understand larger trends, both in time and across space. Periodization refers to the creation of chronologies, the succession of different “periods”, “ages”, “eras”, or any number of other synonyms. Regionalization is similar, except that the classification created involves dividing space into distinct regions, often based off shared culture, language, or geography. The famous archaeological chronology of “Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age” is one example of a well-known (but problematic) periodization. Likewise, the classification of different landmasses into seven continents is a very basic example of a regional classification.
Even non-historians are familiar with the concept of periodization and regionalization in the study of history, with terms like “The Renaissance” or “The West” entering into common parlance. The importance of these time periods and regional blocs are as a means to convey a general historical idea or theme that sets that period or region apart from others. For instance, “The Renaissance” is more than just a division of time. “The Renaissance”, even colloquially, has the connotation of a time period in which European societies were looking backwards for inspiration from the Classical Roman and Greek past. These sorts of divisions can help us quickly grasp the general historical trajectory of a period, in the case of chronologies, or where cultural and historical similarities exist between societies, in the case of regional systems.
However, the criteria which these schemes and classifications are based on are hardly ever straightforward or agreed upon. While early researchers, both archaeologists and historians, tended to treat these systems of periodization or regionalization as encoding “natural” divisions within the world, historical disciplines have since recognized that these divisions are largely arbitrary and reflect the interests and biases of the researcher. In other words, “The Renaissance” does not exist as an entity except inside of the texts written by historians (and perhaps in the heads of a few Renaissance elites). That isn't to say that these periods are entirely fictional: they do capture real differences and changes in societies. However, we could select any number of other equally valid criteria to use in defining periods or regions and these would be just as valid as whatever criteria define “The Renaissance” or “Western Europe”, for instance.
##Problems and Dangers with Periodization and Regionalization
All that said, we shouldn't think that chronologies and regional classifications are not useful for researchers, or for you as a reader of /r/AskHistorians. Even though these classifications are largely arbitrary they can still be a tremendous aid to research if used properly. Most importantly, these classifications should never drive our understanding of history. Instead, our research interests should guide which chronologies or regional schemes we end up using.
Primarily, a good researcher should always be vigilant that the criteria used to define a chronology or regional classification matches their research interests. For example, imagine a period of time that is divided up based on the period of rule for a society's kings. Now, say a researcher is interested studying changes to agricultural production in this time period. Changes in agriculture might coincide with changes in kingship, but if they do not there is no reason our hypothetical researcher should continue to use a chronology based on a criteria (kingship) that doesn't necessarily have any bearing on the topic of their research (agriculture). Since the criteria we use to create these chronologies and regional systems are largely arbitrary, we should select the classifications that have the most direct bearing on our historical interests.
We must also be careful to not let these schemes blind us to interesting historical questions and areas of research. For instance, a common method of dividing time in studying Native American history is to place emphasis on the changes that occurred after conquest by European powers, setting up pre-colonial and colonial time periods. However, this division of time suggests that Native societies were immediately and significantly impacted by European colonialism. While this is true in many cases or in certain specific ways, it may lead us to assume there wasn't any or much continuity between pre-colonial and colonial Native societies. It would be a tragedy then to never research these continuities in Native societies because our chronology led us to assume they weren't there. It is important to always remember that these divisions of time are not “natural” breaks or discontinuities in history or societies, but rather only encode certain sets of changes in societies. Continuity between periods can be just as interesting a subject of study as the discontinuities.
Furthermore, we have to be careful not to apply chronological schemes outside the historical, geographic, and cultural context for which they were developed. A good example is the well-known chronology of Stone Age-Bronze Age-Iron Age. This chronology was originally developed to describe changes to societies in Europe, and was later applied with modifications to other societies. While this scheme seems to work fairly well for describing historical changes in the Near East, and in Africa and China to a lesser extent, popular imagination often applies this scheme to Native American cultures or Polynesian societies, asking why they never developed beyond a “Stone Age”. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the chronology.
As already mentioned, we should be always careful not to view chronologies as encoding “natural” divisions in time, or “natural” developments of society. The Stone-to-Iron Age chronology is **descriptive** of social changes in developments in the Near East, but isn't a **predictive** model of universal culture change that can be applied cross-culturally. For instance, compare [these](http://bento.cdn.pbs.org/hostedbento-prod/filer_public_thumbnails/filer_public/TimeTeamAmerica/sites/crow/basketmaker%20III/basketmaker_pithouse.png__640x337_q85_subsampling-2_upscale.png) two [structures](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Pueblo_Bonito_Aerial.JPG), both built by Pueblo societies in what is the present-day U.S. state of New Mexico, but separated by nearly 1000 years. Both structures are indicative of a society that is nominally “Stone Age” in the sense that they lack metal tools, but there are clear social (and architectural) changes between the society that built the first structure and that which built the second. Calling both “Stone Age” would consequently cover up these significant changes. Instead, a different chronology should be developed to capture the social changes specific to this region and culture, rather than applying a chronology developed for a completely different context.
##How can all this help me ask better questions (and get better answers) in /r/AskHistorians?
This is all well and good for understanding how historians use regional systems and chronologies, but how can this help you on /r/AskHistorians? One of the most common reasons for a question to be removed from /r/AskHistorians is violation of our [Example Seeking](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22example_seeking.22_questions) rule. Within this category, one of the most common reasons for violating the Example Seeking rule is not specifying a sufficiently narrow geographic or temporal range. To quote from the rule:
>Questions likely to be removed are those asking about all history and all places at once or an extraordinary range. If a question isn't reasonably limited to a specific time and/or place, it likely will be removed.
The easiest way to avoid having your question removed under the Example Seeking Rule is therefore to specify both a time and place. Generally, the moderators have decided that even broad categories like “The Middle Ages” or “Europe” are specific enough that a question asking about “Medieval Europe”, for example, would not violate the Example Seeking Rule, despite covering an entire continent and many hundreds of years. Examples of both regional classifications and chronological schemes are provided below as a starting point for narrowing down the scope of your question and give even those without a solid background in history the ability to better specify what they are interested in when writing a question.
Giving this kind of specificity isn't just valuable in avoiding the removal of your question. Generally, the narrower the geographic and chronological scope of your question, the more likely you are to receive a very high quality and satisfying answer. While we do allow questions with very broad regional and chronological scope - “Medieval Europe”, for example – it is important to realize that there may be very significant differences between, say, 10th century Bohemia and 14th century Normandy, both of which fall under the category “Medieval Europe”. Indeed, we would expect that even experts may not be able to answer questions for all time periods and places encapsulated by a category like “Medieval Europe”.
For the most part, the broader the time period and region the more general an answer must be to accurately describe all the variation inherent to a longer time period and wider regional scope. The more specific the regional and chronological constraints of the question, the more specific the answer can be. Consequently, the more you are able to narrow down both the time period and region of interest, the more likely you are to receive an answer that is brimming with specific detail and a compelling story, rather than a very general answer lacking in detail. The example chronology and regional systems provided below can be a good starting point for asking a more narrowly defined question, but the moderators are always happy to help a prospective inquirer narrow down the scope of their question if contacted via modmail.
##REGIONAL SYSTEMS
Below are several examples of systems of regional classification. These are not meant to be authoritative or comprehensive – many other schemes are used in scholarly works. However, this can be a starting point for you to help narrow down the regional scope of your question. These classifications largely focus on continental divisions, but cross-continental schemes also exist and a few have been suggested at the end. Each scheme has an associated map (linked to in the title of the region) to help acquaint you with the divisions in a visual way.
**Note:** Most of the linked maps of regional divisions are based on the boundaries of modern nation-states, rather than cultural or geographic divisions. It is important to remember that these modern national boundaries do not necessarily coincide exactly with cultural/geographic divisions in the past, but are rather intended as a guideline for the approximate geographic boundaries of each region. For example, while the majority of the Amazonian basin lies within the boundaries of modern Brazil, portions extend into nations normally classified as part of the “Andean Region”, such as Peru and Ecuador.
For reference, here is [a link to an album of all the maps](https://imgur.com/a/QUkQO) used here if you would like to peruse them together.
[AFRICA](http://imgur.com/BqV4tjg)
* North Africa
* The Sahel (sometimes divided between adjacent regions)
* West Africa
* Central Africa
* East Africa (but see [this conversation](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4y1739/rules_roundtable_17_periodization_and/d6mjrwk) below for an example of why these regional schemes are just examples, and the kinds of alternatives historians discuss)
* Southern Africa (more than just South Africa the country)
See also *Mediterranean* and *Indian Ocean*
[ASIA](http://imgur.com/0ccsDAh)
* Southwestern (or Western) Asia (sometimes includes Persia/Iran)
* Arabian Peninsula (usually included in Southwest Asia)
* South Asia
* Central Asia (sometimes includes Persia/Iran and Afghanistan, and sometimes Western China/Mongolia)
* East Asia (sometimes includes Southeast Asia and Indonesia)
* Southeast Asia (sometimes includes Indonesia)
* Indonesia (sometimes separate from Southeast Asia)
* Siberia/Circumpolar/Subarctic/North Asia
See also *Mediterranean*, *Circumpolar*, and *Indian Ocean*
[EUROPE](http://imgur.com/qkpYUAx)
**Note:** The inclusion or exclusion of Russia and Turkey from "Europe" is a fairly political matter, and some maps may decide to exclude or include one or both. Additionally, both nations and the regions they cover cross the continental divide between Europe and Asia, adding to some confusion about where they should be classified.
* Western Europe
* Eastern Europe
* Southeastern Europe
* Northern Europe
* Southern Europe
* Central Europe (sometimes split between adjacent regions)
See also *Mediterranean* and *Circumpolar*
[NORTH AMERICA](http://imgur.com/iaKA6cr)
* Arctic and Subarctic
* Northwest Coast
* California
* Great Basin and Plateau
* Great Plains
* U.S. Southwest/Mexican Northwest
* Eastern Woodlands (often divided into Northeastern and Southeastern Woodlands)
* Central America (see *Mesoamerica*)
* Southern Central America (Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama)
See also *Caribbean* and *Circumpolar*
[MESOAMERICA](http://imgur.com/o2gvcN6)
**Note:** The "Northwest" region on this map includes areas traditionally seen a part of the U.S. Southwest, and not part of Mesoamerica at all, including Baja and much of northern Mexico. Refer to the North America map for the actual northern extent of Mesoamerica as a region.
* West Mexico
* Central Mexico
* Gulf Coast
* Oaxaca
* Maya Area
See also *Caribbean*
[SOUTH AMERICA](http://imgur.com/gP9oRly)
* Northern Andes/Caribbean North
* Coastal and Central Andes
* Amazonian Basin
* Southern Cone
See also *Caribbean*
[OCEANIA](http://imgur.com/1L3CHLG)
**Note:** Eastern/Western New Guinea is usually divided between Oceania and Indonesia/Asia because of political boundaries, despite being the same landmass.
* Australia
* Micronesia
* Melanesia
* Polynesia (bounded by “Polynesian triangle” of Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand)
See also *Indian Ocean*
**CROSS-CONTINENTAL REGIONS**
* Eurasia (Includes all of Europe and Asia)
* Indian Ocean (Includes East African Coast, South Asia, Arabian Peninsula, Southeast Asia, and Indonesia.)
* Mediterranean (Includes Southern Europe, Southwestern Asia, and Northern Africa)
* Caribbean (Sometimes includes northern South America - Venezuela/Colombia/the Guyanas - parts of Central America - Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama – and southern Florida, along with the Caribbean islands.)
* Circumpolar (Includes all polar regions of North America and Eurasia)
##CHRONOLOGIES
Chronologies tend to be more specific than regional classifications, applying only to certain societies or individual regional divisions. As such, this post would become unreasonably long to include examples of chronologies for all the regional divisions already listed. As such, we have provided a single, global chronology which can be reasonably used to formulate your questions.
Bear in mind that this division will not work in every place or for every society, but it can be a starting point to narrow down the time period you are interested in. Generally, it will be best if you use a chronological division in formulating your answer that was constructed for a particular region. For example, using dynastic changes to discuss Chinese history.
Furthermore, we have provided a single example of a more specific regional chronology and the rationale behind the chronological divisions, as a way to highlight the kinds of criteria used to distinguish between different time periods.
###GLOBAL CHRONOLOGY
By virtue of attempting to classify the entire history of humanity across the planet, this chronology is extremely general. Additionally, it is very much open for argument how much each of these time periods really applies on a global scale. However, the intent is to give users a starting place to at least begin asking question with some more specificity by including time periods that are more or less sensible to talk about everywhere.
*(mya=million years ago and kya=thousand years ago)*
* **Paleolithic** 2.5mya (Africa only) or 1.8mya to 10kya
* **Neolithic** 10kya to 5,000-2,000 B.C.
* **Antiquity** 5,000-2,000 B.C. to A.D. 1-500
* **Middle Ages/Medieval** A.D. 1-500 to A.D. 1500
* **Early Modern** A.D. 1500 to A.D. 1815
* **Late Modern** A.D. 1815 to A.D. 1945
###PECOS CLASSIFCATION
A chronological sequence for describing Pueblo and Ancestral Puebloan cultures in what is the modern Four Corners region of the Southwestern U.S.A. As Pueblo people still live in the states of New Mexico and Arizona, the chronology spans the earliest peopling of the Americas up until the present.
This particular formulation of the Pecos Classification is modified from that presented by Liebmann 2012 (34-36).
* **Paleoindian** (~15,000kya-10,000kya): When the Americas were populated is still under debate, but the most recent possible period is circa 13000 B.C. However, human habitation of the Americas probably occurred earlier than that. This period is at the end of the Pleistocene (the last “Ice Age”) and is defined by largely nomadic, hunter-gatherer societies.
* **Archaic/Basketmaker** I (10,000kya-1500 B.C): With the transition to the Holocene (our current geological epoch), environmental changes resulted in increasing experimentation with wild plants. Earliest evidence for semi-sedentary villages (in semi-subterranean pit-houses). Gradual extinction of megafauna in this period (e.g. mammoths).
* **Basketmaker II** (1500 B.C.- A.D.500): Introduction of maize and other domesticated crops from Central Mexico. Involved adapting the sub-tropical domesticate maize to the arid climate of the Southwest. Neither fully agricultural nor fully sedentary yet, but experimenting with both.
* **Basketmaker III** (A.D .500-750): Introduction of beans from Central American and full adoption of sedentary agriculture. Earliest pottery vessels.
* **Pueblo I** (A.D. 750-900): Move from semi-subterranean pit-house structures into above-ground roomblocks (e.g. “Pueblos”). Coincides with population increase and spread of farming.
* **Pueblo II** (A.D. 900-1150): Growth of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico as a major regional center. Intensification of long-distance trade (from as far as Mesoamerica and potentially the Eastern Woodlands). Largest settlements and structures yet seen in the Southwest. Spread of Chaco-related pottery-designs and architecture.
* **Pueblo III** (A.D. 1150-1300): Collapse of Chaco Canyon as a major center, and shifting importance to Aztec Ruins archaeological site in Northern New Mexico. The San Juan region (present-day Four Corners region) continues to grow and solidifies its place as the population center of the Pueblo world, e.g. Mesa Verde national monument.
* **Pueblo IV** (A.D. 1350-1600): Sudden and massive outmigration of almost the entire population of the Four Corners around A.D. 1275. This population moves south, combining with existing populations in southern and central Arizona and along the Rio Grande in New Mexico. Rise of new religious ideologies, like the Katsina cult and Salado cult. Fewer villages on the landscape, but existing villages grow in population size and become very dense.
* **Pueblo V** (A.D. 1600-1848): Colonization of New Mexico by the Spanish and the establishment of a mission system. Attempted Christianization of the Pueblo people, but traditional religious beliefs are maintained. 1680 Pueblo Revolt expels the Spanish from New Mexico until 1692 and wins Pueblo groups increased rights and autonomy from the Spanish crown.
* **Pueblo VI** (A.D. 1848-Present): U.S. Annexation of New Mexico and Arizona following the Mexican American War. Like other Native Americans, Pueblo people subjected to attempted cultural extermination in Indian schools. Reservation system established, which remains up to the present.
**Source:**
Liebmann, Matthew. 2012. The Rest Is History: Devaluing the Recent Past in the Archaeology of the Pueblo Southwest. In *Decolonizing Indigenous Histories: Exploring Prehistoric/Colonial Transitions in Archaeology*, edited by Maxine Oland, Siobhan M. Hart, and Liam Frink, pp. 19-44. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. | 65 | 0.91 | null | false | 1,471,373,955 | [
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"body": "I'm actually always quite pleased to chime in on a question where a user has asked about, say, \"peasants in the Middle Ages\" or whatever and I can talk about Persian peasants, even though I *know* that OP really meant Western European, or even more specifically English peasants.\n\nI know what you want OP, but I'm gonna learn you something about Islamdom whether you like it or not ;)",
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"body": "I would like to add an additional disclaimer regarding the use of archaeological units of time. There is a tendency by some archaeologists and some lay people to attempt to extrapolate from time unit to social entity. This is a holdover from the early archaeological focus known as Culture History. The result of Cultural Historical investigation was chronologies and descriptions of *Archaeological Cultures.* Chronologies were based on changes in artifact styles. Cultural descriptions were largely very general and directed at why styles changed. Many, many, many, studies resulted in conjecture about human migrations or other large scale cultural or natural events. But, really what they had were changes in artifact/types.\n\n Wikipedia provides a great definition of Archaeological Culture:\n\n>An archaeological culture is a recurring assemblage of artifacts from a specific time and place, which may constitute the material culture remains of a particular past human society. The connection between the artifacts is based on archaeologists' understanding and interpretation and does not necessarily relate to real groups of humans in the past. The concept of archaeological culture is fundamental to culture-historical archaeology.\n\nThe issue here is that there is general tendency by many to ignore the part about \"the connection between artifacts.... does not necessarily relate to real groups of humans...\" Many still act as if they can distill descriptions of societies from artifact collections as V. Gordon Childe did in 1929:\n\n>We find certain types of remains - pots, implements, ornaments, burial rites and house forms - constantly recurring together. Such a complex of associated traits we shall call a \"cultural group\" or just a \"culture\". We assume that such a complex is the material expression of what today we would call \"a people\".\n\nArchaeological periodization is the description of a unit of time defined by artifact styles. It may or may not be useful in illucidating other culture change. The use of \"Clovis culture\" or others is just maddening to me. Clovis is a point style, very well defined, that occurs throughout North America and has a very tight period of use between 12,700 and 13,400 years ago. What can we say about the Clovis Culture? I would say very little. There is too much variability in Clovis cultural components. \n\nClovis is an obvious case, but this tendency to take a time unit based on artifact styles and then tell a story about interesting people during that time, and then project it over geographic space has resulted in some terrible archaeology in the US. It's still done all the time and I would caution readers about the hazards of this approach.\n\nThe practice of the \"Direct Historical Approach\" is also the subject of some serious criticism. This is the practice of projecting into the prehistoric past the traits of historic cultures or via \"ethnographic analogy\". But perhaps that is a little too tangential.",
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"body": "I for one would like to thank you for ending the Early Modern Era on July 18th, 1815.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9chju4/monday_methods_history_pedagogy_the_theory_and/ | 9chju4 | 8 | t3_9chju4 | Monday Methods: History Pedagogy (The Theory and Practice of Teaching and Learning) | I should preface our conversation about pedagogy by divulging that I am an academic in the US teaching in-person classes at the university level. Any omissions on my part are opportunities for discussion.
**Historians in the Classroom**
Historians are both ahead of and behind the pedagogical times. A standard introductory level history course is taught by the “sage on the stage,” performing an extended verbal essay each 50-minute class period. The pedagogical literature has for many years encouraged us to instead act as a “guide by the side,” a model prevalent in upper-level discussion-based or seminar courses.
*Active learning* is one of the core best-practices in pedagogy. At its essence, active learning is based on the principle that students learn by constructing their own understanding of material by building on their prior knowledge. Active learning includes an enormous range of strategies, including class discussions, debates, games, and brainstorming. Activities that work relatively easily in larger classes include Think-Pair-Share, note comparison, clickers, video reflections, and one-minute reflections.
As detail oriented as we historians are, it can be difficult for us to move away from a *coverage model* of teaching. However, if we give up the sage on the stage method of teaching in favor of discussions, activities, and/or projects, it means giving up the control and pace that allows for a coverage model of teaching. The pedagogical literature supports slowing down to cover less material more deeply. More pedagogically-oriented lectures, including elements such as active learning, handouts, and assessment of student learning, is better received by students. (See, for example, Saroyan and Snell, 1997.)
**Tech in the Classroom**
Although we here on AskHistorians are clearly not allergic to the twenty-first century, many of our colleagues are reluctant to incorporate technology in the classroom. What are the pros and cons of tech in the classroom?
Needless to say, technology is frequently distracting. But aside from the temptations of reddit, students taking notes on laptops perform worse on higher-level or conceptual questions. Research by Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) suggests that laptops allow students to take verbatim notes, which leads to less processing during lecture material.
On the other hand, we must allow technology in the classroom if for no other reason than to provide accommodations to students with disabilities. Many advocates of technology in the classroom insist that the nature of class time and assessments must be changed to make effective use of the wide array of tools and information available to students today. Laptops will not be distracting if students are actively engaging in research, synthesis, or presentation. *Digital humanities* has become a sexy methodology in the discipline, and some advanced-degree-granting institutions have even begun to offer classes or certificates in digital teaching and/or research methodologies. However, the implementation of DH in the classroom varies widely.
The bottom line is that you should have a tech policy and explain your rationale to your students. This *transparency* will help students buy into your policy and demonstrate the thought you put into your teaching.
**Who we Teach**
History departments have faced [declining enrollments](https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/february-2018/enrollment-declines-continue-aha-survey-again-shows-fewer-undergraduates-in-history-courses) in the last few years. (Although surprisingly, [this trend did not directly coincide with the 2007-8 economic crisis](https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/october-2012/clios-charm-holding-fast).) [The recent high in the number of history BAs conferred was in 2012](https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/september-2017/decline-in-history-majors-continues-departments-respond).
In the US, our students reflect our changing national demographics. The number of history BA degrees awarded to women and traditionally underrepresented minority groups [have been rising](https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/september-2017/decline-in-history-majors-continues-departments-respond). Although women are overrepresented in humanities disciplines, they made up just 40.3% of history BAs awarded in 2015. Many universities are improving their support-systems for first-generation or otherwise at-risk students by implementing new programming, such as advising, first-year college-skills courses, or mentoring.
**What we Teach**
Concurrent with the growth of a diverse student population, many departments and faculty have pressed for a more diverse curriculum. While academic hiring for history faculty has shrunk significantly since the academic crash of 2007-08, the steepest long-term declines have been in European history. The number of positions in world, Latin American, African, Asian, and Middle Eastern history has [risen over the long-term](https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/september-2011/decline-of-the-west-or-the-rise-of-the-rest) (though [hiring in those fields is still inconsistent in the current market](https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/november-2017/another-tough-year-for-the-academic-job-market-in-history)). The readjustment of faculty specializations has accompanied efforts to decolonialize the curriculum. Departments have been replacing “Western Civilization” with courses in global history. Increasing calls are also being made to diversify the US history survey course chronologically, geographically, and culturally. Here’s a “fun” game for anyone teaching or learning the US history survey: What is the start date of your course? What political values stand behind that starting point? How does the narrative of the course change with other start dates?
Another aspect of teaching that’s at the crossroads of economic pressure, technology, and our increasingly diverse student bodies is the textbook itself. The rising cost of textbooks has been an issue of outrage for several years. A movement for Open Educational Resources has advocated for freely accessibly and openly licensed media for learning purposes. Some excellent resources are being developed for history, including [The American Yawp](http://www.americanyawp.com), a textbook written by college-level instructors, which in my estimation far surpasses standard textbooks on the market with its range of up-to-date scholarship. Personally, I find myself teaching outside my primary fields this year, and I have been most struck by the lack of resources for educators teaching outside the traditional major survey-courses. Historians, do you have recommendations for teaching resources in your field?
**Recommended Reading**
A few books in the scholarship of teaching and learning that I recommend for historians are:
James M. Lang, Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning Jossey-Bass 2016
Lang’s book has quickly become a classic in this field. It contains ideas and strategies for working active learning into your teaching without majorly overhauling your classes. The style, lack of jargon, and practical content also make it a good starting place if you’re unfamiliar with the pedagogy literature.
Therese Huston, Teaching What You Don’t Know (multiple eds.)
This one’s for the many grad students here in AskHistorians. What do you do when you, a medievalist, is asked to teach US women’s history? What if you get that prized TT position after having promised in your job letter that of course you could teach the survey course that begins several centuries before your period of expertise? This book is for you! Huston provides practical strategies for getting through a course outside your field. I particularly appreciate the care she takes to consider the intersections of age, race, and background in establishing authority in the classroom.
Barbara E. Walvoord, *Effective Grading:* *A Tool for Learning and Assessment in College* (multiple eds.)
Grading is frequently one of our least favorite tasks as instructors. How can we save our own time, improve our student ratings, and preempt complaints about fairness? Walvoord’s book describes best practices for a variety of kinds of assignments. One of her specialties is in teaching writing, which makes this book a great choice for history instructors. | 51 | 0.9 | null | false | 1,535,940,314 | [
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"body": "Great work!\n\nI particularly appreciate the section on the obsession with \"coverage.\" Too many times have I seen educators at both HS and collegiate level get obsessed with teaching it all (as if possible).\n\nI always suggest the method of creating your class topics last in developing your course structure. Start with your class goals (3-5). An example might be the following: Students will be able to recognize interactions between humans and their environment and how they shape history. Although broad, it guides the goals of each lecture/lesson. I also suggest marking down some \" subthemes\" you want to cover. Something like, commodification, changing distance, animal extinction/destruction, etc.\n\nNext you can write down topics in your course period/location/field which can drawn out important aspects of the goal. For example, the following might be a few topics for the previous goal if used in a US History II course: transcontinental railroad, buffalo, railroads and cattle/meatpacking, conservation of Progressive era, influenza, dust bowl, suburbanization, car culture, interstate highway system, and many more. Next you limit yourself or combine some of these. \n\nAfter you have topics selected, make an essential question for the topic. Something that is specific to the topic, but stated in a way that could be applied to other topics, too. For the topic \"conservation,\" you could ask, \"What were the historical actors goals for the use of 'nature' and who was to benefit from that use?\" Note, question is one related to historiographical discussions and might even have a particular work in mind. (Looking at you *Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency*)\n\nNow you are in a position such that one of your class topics is progressive era conservation and you have a guiding question that, hopefully, is one students might be intrinsically interested in. You can now make a lesson based on that question. Use images, primary source documents, discussion, etc to leave behind lecture. ",
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"body": "As a current Master's student whose undergraduate experience is still fresh in his mind, I can definitely attest that, at the student-level, there is a perception that the emphasis on \"coverage\" is obsolete in the face of unprecedented access to information on the internet. However, many students have difficulty imagining an alternative model; I have many friends and colleagues outside of history that still believe that graduate level courses still deal with \"coverage\", albeit with greater depth. ",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ig0u50/is_this_a_worthy_research_topic/ | ig0u50 | 5 | t3_ig0u50 | Is this a worthy research topic? | I'm entering my senior year in history and need to find a topic for my capstone.
[This other r/AskHistorians post relates to my idea.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ifoqe4/why_did_african_traditional_religionss_remain/)
Recent polling showed a decline in participation in religion in the US among (I believe) every ethnicity/race. However, Pew Research shows that black Americans have the largest percentage of self-identification as Christian at 79%.
The previous user mentioned that 1/3 of slaves brought to the Americas were Muslim. That means that they had exposure to Abrahamic religions and monotheism in general.
I want to research why a group of people who were enslaved and had a religion forced upon them (Christianity) that was also used to justify their enslavement later developed into the most religious group in that country in that particular religion. Is this something worth researching? Is this something feasible? Is it a waste of time? | 0 | 0.29 | null | false | 1,598,312,785 | [
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"body": "It is a little patronizing as written, and that’s something you would need to be very careful of. You would also need to engage in depth with the fact that Christianity was also used to “justify” emancipation, as the majority of those who wrote and acted in support of abolition did so for explicitly Christian reasons.",
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"body": "I think it would be a worthy project or at least I would find it interesting. I'm not a professional historian and I haven't kept up with recent research trends so you should talk to a professor about it to get their opinion. But if you do pursue it, I think a book to look at would be Nathan Hatch's \"The Democratization of American Christianity\" it examines religion in Jacksonian America and has a chapter on the faith of those who were enslaved. It's a little outdated but still relevant information to what you're asking for. He breaks down the differences between the faith of those enslaved and the people using that faith to keep them enslaved. So it would be a start to possibly understanding why you find such a high percentage of African-Americans remaining faithful.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/hj3atr/goodbye_district_of_columbia_hello_douglass/ | hj3atr | 3 | t3_hj3atr | Goodbye District of Columbia, hello Douglass Commonwealth... | What book(s) would you recommend on the indepth history & development of Washington, DC? Specifically, I'm interested in the original plan & founding of the capitol; what finally led to retrocession to Virginia; how DC lagged behind other major Western capitol cities in population, development, grandiose monumental architecture; antebellum & postbellum African American contributions & influence in culture, politics, economics; the expansion of federal power under FDR to the post 9/11 era; talks of statehood. Any suggestions & help I very much appreciate. | 3 | 1 | null | false | 1,593,577,460 | [
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"body": "Sure so there are 4 off hand that I might suggest you could look at. Luckily all are available on Amazon or from your preferred reseller of choice!\n\n1. *Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital* By Chris Myers Asch and George Derek Musgrove. An unsparing look at Race, Representation, Home Rule, and more in the district since its founding. From the clergy at Georgetown serving as slave brokers, to the frankly larger than life figure of Mayor Marion Barry that looms large over DC politics even today. For a city that for the vast majority of its history was majority Black it is a story that is often erased by simply seeing the letters \"DC\" in a national news report. \n\n2. *Washington: A History of Our National City* By Tom Lewis. Mr. Lewis is an English Professor by trade but has written a good general intro history for the the District. From the cities of Alexandria and Georgetown which predate DC, to its long journey since. A good compliment with Chocalte City to see the background of the battles over Home Rule and the underlying tension between a federal govt running a city with only passing resemblance to a master plan and a Black citizenry denied real control of their local government. \n\n3. *Empire of Mud: The Secret History of Washington, DC* By J.D. Dickey. Something of a lighter read! But full of interesting quirks, and a few moments of tragedy. For instance did you know that there actually used to be a canal that passed through what is now the Mall and in front of the White House, to avoid a particularly sandy part of the Potomac. \n\n4. *A Fool's Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump* By Lonnie G. Bunch. The story of the museum's founding and origins by its first Director. A look at the intricate halls of national power, the nitty gritty of high level public history, and the inner workings of one of the most important institutions to telling the story and preserving the history of the US in the Smithsonian.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9q82mx/help_us_marines_in_deadly_fight_with_british_and/ | 9q82mx | 10 | t3_9q82mx | Help! US Marines in deadly fight with British and South African soldiers in WWII Auckland. | I'm going through an oral history of WWII and came upon this:
​
"Well, ninety of them—Marines killed ninety of them. They won’t tell you all that stuff, but we did. They killed three or four of us. We killed ninety of them, those … South Africans and the British Eighth Army. We had blocked off seven blocks, wasn’t nothing they could do about it but let us fight it out. And then the Eighth Army took their bunch and moved them further out and let the Marines hold on. What started the fight? I was there in the fight. Well, they had this big movie. So we was in the movie and the British National Anthem come 11 on, you know, playing their song and everything. And we stood up to it. We honored it. Then the American National Anthem came on playing the national anthem. They booed it, and when they booed it they was in trouble. The fight started there in that theater when they booed the American flag. Before it was over, we’d killed ninety of them, and they never did boo our flag anymore. That was the end of the booing of the American flag. That was in New Zealand."
​
I want to learn everything I can about this incident. I keep getting hits for the Battle of Manners Street - it is not that. This stemmed from different motivations and took place in a different city (the incident I'm looking for happened in Auckland). This happened shortly after Guadalcanal and before Tarawa.
​
Thank you for your help! | 27 | 0.77 | null | false | 1,540,162,969 | [
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"body": "Are you able to provide the source for this annecdote?\n\nEither way Manners Street was far from the first or last booze, pride, and temper fueled incident in Australia or New Zealand between the host nations and American servicemen. \n\nNew Zealand's official history even notes a few scrapes in Auckland that over time could have evolved into the outright battle recalled here. 3 especially do fit the window you mentioned after the WATCHTOWER landings in August 1942 and November 1943 when the Gilbert and Marshalls campaign began which included GALVANIC and Tarawa. There were certainly as almost always more than a few points of tension between thousands of relatively cash flush US men dumped in county for weeks or months while thousands of local men were in Europe or Africa, and this did reach a peak in 1943 as US numbers reached their max and many New Zealand men were allowed to finally return home on leave to broken relationships, engagements, understandings or more along with more routine clashes of culture.\n\n\n> Auckland also saw its share of conflict, with a drunken brawl in October 1942, bottle throwing and pistol shots in Shortland St five months later, and a stabbing in Queen St in May 1943.\n\nhttps://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/us-forces-in-new-zealand/yankee-boys-kiwi-girls\n\nIts also odd they claim that South African troops were present. No large formations from SA ever served in the South Pacific or were garrisoned in New Zealand. Indeed like NZ at the time in 1942/43 South Africa in addition to a modest air force and contribution to the Royal Navy was fielding just one division sized force in active service down from a max of two and some independent units due to manpower issues, and in 1943 converted it to the 6th SA Armored Division which would fight in Italy.\n\n\nWe can note however that yes, censorship both by US and Allied command and local civilian leadership did keep news of incidents from spreading often, and even then usually late in most instances, or only passing references. \n\nSome additional quotes expand on some fo the incidents above.\n\n> An article in a weekly paper during February 1943 was not repeated by other papers. This ‘Shots in Shortland Street’ stated that in the early hours of 10 February an altercation in Auckland between New Zealand and American servicemen over women flared into bottle throwing and ‘several scarcely playful bouts of fisticuffs’, subsided for a few moments while reinforcements were whistled up, then ‘according to an onlooker’ pistols were drawn and it appeared that two men were wounded though on which side was not clear.\n\nAnd:\n\n> There was a ‘serious affray’ in an amusement park in Auckland’s Queen Street on the evening of 3 May 1943 between Maoris and American sailors, in which a Maori and a Negro were both stabbed, the latter seriously; a Maori who had incited others to fight was sent to prison for two weeks.\n\nHope that helps, and please share the source of the story. could very much help in answering!",
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"body": "You may find this useful/interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7chl4d/is_this_claim_about_racial_tensions_in_the_uk/",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zirmo/meta_lets_do_this_faq_together/ | zirmo | 57 | t3_zirmo | [Meta] Let's do this FAQ together | We've been talking about an FAQ page for a long time, but have never gotten around to putting it together. So, why not start it now? We'll crowdsource it, so start suggesting questions that have been asked more than once, and we'll start gathering up the links. Once we have a good collection, I'll edit the original post here to include all the links, and we'll link this post in the sidebar. That way, we can keep this as an ongoing thread, so that if new questions later become "frequently asked," users can simply post them in the comments here and I'll update the list.
**Three-way wars or battles** thanks /u/grotesquesque:
[1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zhq4i/has_there_ever_been_an_example_of_a_three_way/) and [2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rtsc7/is_there_any_record_of_a_three_or_more_sided/)
**American and British accents**, thanks to /u/Irishfafnir: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rlv3j/would_americans_at_the_time_of_the_revolution)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xpd6w/when_did_the_current_dialect_of_american_english)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vi59g/when_did_americans_lose_their_brittish_accent)
[4](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/t9frm/differences_in_american_and_british_english)
[5](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yxno1/when_exactly_did_the_rift_form_between_british)
**History Careers and Education**, thanks to /u/HallenbeckJoe: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rrgyg/is_a_phd_worth_it/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/krny8/what_is_your_job/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/qk0t0/studying_history_at_ma_and_phd_level/)
[4](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/sed0a/history_grad_school_decisions/)
[5](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ppilu/a_few_question_to_a_historian_if_you_will/)
[6](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pmccd/how_hard_is_it_to_become_a_college_or_highschool/)
[7](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rr6i7/how_can_i_become_a_historian/)
[8](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tqrmb/considering_grad_school_in_history_what_programs/)
[9](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tklv9/prospects_for_an_aspiring_chinese_history/)
[10](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/li5ea/first_semester_graduate_student_miserable/)
[11](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tfegr/question_about_majoring_in_history/)
[12](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u0n1c/history_as_a_career/)
[13](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/y5pc4/sorry_if_this_is_the_wrong_place_but_how_does_one/)
[14](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zdov7/inspired_by_yesterdays_thread_what_advice_would/)
**Slavery and the Civil War**, thanks to Irishfafnir: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yoyys/your_opinion_how_accurate_is_it_to_say_the_civil/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/svoo6/causes_of_the_american_civil_war/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/us25s/civil_war_slavery_or_states_rights/)
[4](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ww7wl/ive_been_reading_time_magazines_reissue_entitled/)
**Could Nazi Germany have won WWII?**, thanks to Irishfafnir: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/sku7u/world_war_ii_was_hitler_actually_very_close_to/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xuu8i/at_what_point_did_it_become_impossible_for_hitler/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/v0wc6/was_it_even_a_possibility_the_axis_could_have_won/)
**Did Hitler ever kill anyone?**, thanks to Irishfafnir: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wiv17/did_adolf_hitler_personally_kill_anyone/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xhp0s/did_hitler_ever_kill_anyone/)
**Axis post-war plans**, thanks to Irishfafnir: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u4dp0/what_were_nazi_germanys_plans_postwwii_in_the/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/y08i2/what_were_nazi_germanys_plans_for_europe_after/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yy5vj/what_was_the_demarcation_line_agreed_upon_by/)
**Japan and the atomic bombs**, thanks to Irishfafnir: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u6qqo/there_has_been_some_controversy_on_the_true/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ydn10/could_america_have_used_the_atomic_bomb_on_a/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rmc3g/why_did_japan_surrender/)
[4](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xagc8/would_it_have_been_worse_if_america_hadnt_nuke/)
**Japan and Pearl Harbor**, thanks to Irishfafnir: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/n3wvd/what_caused_japan_to_attack_pearl_harbor_on_12741/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rcfcz/why_did_japan_attack_pearl_harbour/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xs5of/how_much_was_japan_forced_into_war_by_the_us/)
**Historians' views of Howard Zinn's *A People's History of the United States*,** thanks to Irishfafnir: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/uo4zh/meta_lets_have_a_serious_talk_about_howard_zinn/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/umph1/im_thinking_of_reading_a_peoples_history_by/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rzauq/howard_zinn_go/)
**Historians' views of Jared Diamond's *Guns, Germs, and Steel*,** thanks to Irishfafnir: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wd6jt/what_do_you_think_of_guns_germs_and_steel/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ui5eu/are_there_other_works_like_guns_germs_steel_by/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ypia3/what_are_the_problems_with_the_book_guns_germs/) [4](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vd2u9/why_did_technology_advance_faster_in_europe_and/c53gp6a) [5](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/timi4/the_askhistorians_master_book_list/c4nagff)
**Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder before the modern era**, thanks to /u/Daeres: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vey09/is_there_any_information_on_posttraumatic_stress/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/uqkub/did_soldiers_in_the_middle_ages_get_ptsd_if_so/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/w202l/how_prevalent_was_shell_shock_or_ptsd_before_ww1/)
[4](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zft8w/how_prevalent_was_ptsd_and_similar_psycotic/)
[5](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wnor5/is_there_any_evidence_that_ptsd_spanned_the/)
**Historicity of Jesus Christ**, thanks to Daeres: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vhcw2/how_much_of_the_bible_is_historical/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/t8mtj/historical_authenticity_of_apostles_paul/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rubhc/so_what_do_we_actually_know_about_the_life/)
[4](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ryagn/the_jews_the_pyramids_and_the_plagues/)
[5](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/nwh3d/did_jesus_die_on_a_cross/)
[6](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/v2i4v/is_there_any_even_the_slightest_amount_of/)
[7](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vr0qu/what_is_the_historical_proof_for_jesus_christ/)
[8](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xdkbt/in_terms_of_historical_accuracy_which_is_more/)
[9](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/npdil/what_historical_facts_do_we_know_about_jesus/)
[10](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xlmaw/what_is_the_oldest_document_referencing_jesus/)
[11](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/y9b9y/i_found_a_book_suggesting_the_jesus_christ_was/)
[12](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ngqkv/a_book_i_recently_read_titled_roman_warfare/)
[13](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/twdyv/what_do_we_really_know_about_jesus_christ/)
[14](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/x9a7l/as_i_understand_it_most_historians_agree_that/)
**BC/AD dating system**, thanks to /u/Algernon_Asimov: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/x9ofm/at_what_point_did_society_begin_referring_to_the/c5kg94q) [2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/p4gqx/when_did_we_start_using_the_bcad_dating_system/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rcqim/when_did_we_start_measuring_years_in_bc_and_ad/)
[4](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/t3si9/what_happened_2012_years_ago_when_the_date/)
[5](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vjp3j/how_do_humans_really_know_what_year_it_is_what/)
[6](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vd7fc/when_did_the_world_agree_that_the_year_2012_for/)
[7](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wu47z/who_or_what_group_of_people_decided_the_switch/)
[8](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/x9ofm/at_what_point_did_society_begin_referring_to_the/)
**History of Jewish, Muslim and Christian relations**, thanks to /u/jigglysquishy:
[1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ve7wx/when_and_why_did_the_mutual_dislike_between/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ylyab/have_the_muslims_ever_committed_genocide_against/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tobn2/why_was_european_christianity_in_the_high_middle/)
**Origins of World War One**, thanks to /u/NMW: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/z904j/what_was_the_alliances_part_in_the_ignition_of_wwi/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/v7005/reasons_why_germany_is_at_fault_for_wwi/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wixki/who_was_most_to_blame_for_wwi_if_you_had_to_blame/)
**What if the Central Powers had won WWI?**, thanks to NMW:
[1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tlcbs/was_there_any_chance_for_the_central_powers_to/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/nc2un/how_might_the_world_be_different_if_central/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u21nf/what_demands_would_the_central_powers_have/)
[4](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wdkjn/how_would_the_course_of_history_have_been_changed/)
**Origins of the terms "First" and "Second World War"**, thanks to NMW:
[1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/r03y9/when_was_the_term_world_war_first_used/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tn8hm/when_during_the_second_world_war_did_people_cease/)
**Questions about the Library of Alexandria**, thanks to NMW:
[1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/sxcvu/is_there_a_chance_that_before_its_destruction_the/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xus4m/the_library_of_alexandria/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zaz9n/what_do_we_know_about_the_texts_lost_in_the/)
[4](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/y7gj0/little_known_information_on_the_library_of/)
[5](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tc0eo/historical_muslims_and_scienceknowledge_can/)
[6](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zho47/what_are_the_effects_of_a_sudden_destruction_of/)
**Anglo-American Relations**, thanks to Irishfafnir:
[1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xepyl/what_caused_the_us_and_britain_to_have_such_a/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zi9n2/can_someone_explain_how_the_united_states_and/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vjwqy/when_did_the_us_and_britain_become_friends/)
**The Dark Ages, Religion, Human Progress**, thanks to /u/wee_little_puppteman:
[1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/sp8dc/would_the_world_be_more_technologically_advanced/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/r4tw9/how_far_do_you_believe_we_would_have_advanced_as/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vr2bg/theories_how_advanced_would_the_world_be_if_the/)
**Realism of Assassin's Creed**, thanks to wee_little_puppetman:
[1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/v5c42/how_close_were_the_cities_of_assassins_creed_2_to/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tmwgt/sent_here_from_rassassinscreed_did_city_guards/)
**Disease and Colonization of the Americas**, thanks to /u/talleyrayand: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wf9wt/why_did_native_americans_die_from_european/) [2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/szq2h/a_few_years_ago_i_watched_a_documentary_that_said/) [3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/su6kb/how_come_we_only_hear_about_indigenous_tribes/) [4](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yuaag/we_know_native_americans_were_wiped_out_partly_by/) [5](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/x96mn/why_was_europe_less_effected_by_american_diseases/) [6](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tcr30/postcolumbus_diseases_did_they_go_the_other_way/) [7](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ypd8c/what_would_the_consequences_be_and_what_would/) [8](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vxrv4/a_photo_on_my_facebook_showed_up_today_claiming/) [9](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yuaag/we_know_native_americans_were_wiped_out_partly_by/) [10](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tocco/how_accurate_is_this_article/) [11](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tpwq0/is_this_article_on_native_americans_accurate/)
**Native Americans, Disease, and Vikings**, thanks to talleyrayand: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u39xi/did_the_vikings_in_north_america_ever_pass_along/) [2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ysroh/why_wasnt_there_a_plague_among_native_americans/)
**Travel and contact across the Atlantic before Columbus and not the Vikings**, thanks to Talleyrayand: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u9by2/precolumbus_travel_to_the_americas/) [2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xxtvb/evidence_of_oldworld_civilizations_making_it_to/) [3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/upsxe/did_native_americans_ever_come_across_washedup/) [4](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tp5ry/native_americans_in_europe_in_60_bc/) [5](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/s1ngx/did_native_americans_have_knowledge_or_theories/) [6](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/sfuxu/why_didnt_advanced_civilizations_like_the_romans/) [7](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wuxal/question_about_unofficial_first_contacts_in_the/)
**The first historical figure**, thanks to Algernon_Asimov: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/q8726/oldest_person_we_know_to_have_existed/) [2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/uomty/whos_the_first_human_in_history_that_we_can/) [3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vmpr2/who_is_the_earliest_person_that_we_know_of_in/)
**Canada and the American Revolution**, thanks to Irishfafnir: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10vtdr/why_didnt_quebec_join_the_13_colonies_revolution/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10ixf3/why_didnt_other_british_colonies_such_as_colonies/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ucymy/why_didnt_the_canadian_colonies_join_the_rest_of/)
**History of Africa and "Underdevelopment"**, thanks to /u/estherke: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/t8g72/why_is_africa_not_as_developed_as_the_other/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/11bv4x/why_were_there_so_few_empires_in_africa/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/11k5f4/why_did_all_of_the_other_continents_develop_so/)
[4](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10c0fh/why_are_former_african_colonies_generally_much/)
[5](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rerea/why_is_it_that_western_europe_developed/)
[6](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/111vj8/what_caused_africa_to_be_so_poor_and_corrupt/)
**Historical views on homosexuality**, thanks to /u/sleepyrivertroll: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/p4jqc/what_is_the_historical_viewpoint_on_homosexuality/) [2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wzme2/how_did_homosexuality_go_from_something_that_was/) [3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tawl9/when_was_homosexuality_first_restrained_and/) [4](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/mwlwm/10th_century_danish_attitudes_towards/) [5](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wt0zh/when_did_homosexuality_become_taboo_in_society/) [6](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zzvq3/why_is_homosexuality_taboo_among_hindus_is_it_a/)
**Historical treatments of the plague**, thanks to /u/musschrott: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vg2ll/were_the_traditional_beaked_plague_doctor/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/qr4f1/was_there_anything_that_existed_in_the_middle/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistory/comments/rikhr/why_was_kingdom_of_poland_spared_by_black_death/)
[4](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ui18v/survival_of_the_black_death/)
[5](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/r1cul/whats_the_history_behind_the_development_of/)
**Historical regional political differences in the United States, and southern political identity**, thanks to Irishfafnir: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wjt4l/is_there_an_historical_reason_the_us_northeast/)
[2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12sqi4/why_has_the_northeast_of_the_us_been_historically/)
[3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10lfuz/why_the_northernwestern_us_has_a_liberal_majority/)
[4](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/z0clw/what_caused_the_shift_in_voter_demographics/)
[5](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/t5y3m/it_seems_that_during_the_civil_war_and/)
[6](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/11g20w/when_did_the_republican_and_democratic_parties)
[7](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12vvo4/how_and_when_did_the_republican_party_transition/)
**Vietnam**, thanks to me: **Explaining American failure** [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pkzfs/whats_the_main_reason_the_us_were_defeated_in/) [2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/11qos9/what_were_the_most_important_factors_in_the_loss/) [3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tsbxf/why_was_north_vietnam_able_to_defeat_south/) [4](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/11hab1/problems_with_us_strategy_in_the_vietnam_war/); **Origins of the war** [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10wk5x/i_hear_contrasting_narratives_about_the_vietnam/); **"Social" histories of the war, experiences of soldiers and non-combatants** [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ssux1/what_is_a_good_book_on_the_vietnam_war_that/) [2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/p7cf1/how_bad_was_the_vietnam_war_comparatively/) [3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/v39eb/when_and_why_did_the_us_military_change_from/); **Atrocities** [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ysx5v/what_were_the_extent_of_american_atrocities_in/); **Public opinions on the war** [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/mee6s/this_has_bugged_me_for_a_while_what_is_the_key/) [2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10ps60/what_was_it_about_the_vietnam_war_that_had_so/) [3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10ps60/what_was_it_about_the_vietnam_war_that_had_so/); **Positive outcomes from the war?** (not so much) [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ttlkq/did_us_involvement_in_vietnam_do_any_good_at_all/)
**Populations of China and India**, thanks to Algernon_Asimov: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wk6ea/why_do_china_and_india_have_such_massive/) [2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zw5nv/what_is_reason_for_india_having_such_a_large/) [3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yzs34/what_are_the_societal_characteristics_that_lead/) [4](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12y7yl/why_did_china_have_such_a_large_population/) [5](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12ydq2/what_made_china_and_india_the_most_populated/) [6](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/138yqe/at_what_point_did_chinas_population_start_booming/)
**Historical Science Fiction and Ideas of the Future**, thanks to Algernon_Asimov: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/srpew/when_did_we_start_writing_science_fiction/) [2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u8gxv/before_electricity_what_were_visions_of_the/) [3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vi6la/did_any_famous_people_from_antiquity_or_any_time/) [4](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zrhgk/what_did_people_in_your_area_of_expertise_think/c67haeu) [5](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10rnyt/how_did_people_imagined_the_future/) [6](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/116lfa/what_did_people_in_the_past_such_as_ancient_rome/) [7](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/131etw/how_old_is_the_idea_of_time_travel/)
**The history of Israel, Palestine and the conflict between the Jews and Muslims**, thanks to /u/whitesock: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13dzzh/can_anyone_give_me_an_unbiased_historical/) [2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/137xy5/the_conflict_of_israel_v_hamas_has_come_up_due_to/) [3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xdvmo/is_israels_impressive_military_record_a_result_of/) [4](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/113yhr/why_did_the_arab_states_fail_in_the_war_of_1948/) [5](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10gvig/what_is_the_real_deal_with_israel_and_what_is_the/) [6](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/uyhln/in_1946_what_happened_in_palestine_and_where_did/) [7](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wz44l/was_antisemitism_prominent_in_the_arab_world/)
**US-Israel Relations**, thanks to whitesock: [1](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/120gvn/whats_the_historical_basis_for_the_current/) [2](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/kjdal/serious_question_for_historians_why_does_the_us/) [3](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wxonc/usisrael_relations_how_did_the_us_go_from/)
| 92 | 0.99 | null | false | 1,347,046,905 | [
{
"body": "**How did the world agree on what year it is?**\n\nor\n\n**When did we start using the BC/AD system?**\n\n* [When did we start using the BC/AD dating system?](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/p4gqx/when_did_we_start_using_the_bcad_dating_system/)\n\n* [When did we start measuring years in BC and AD?](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rcqim/when_did_we_start_measuring_years_in_bc_and_ad/)\n\n* [What happened 2012 years ago, when the date changed from BCE to CE?](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/t3si9/what_happened_2012_years_ago_when_the_date/)\n\n* [Why is BC an English abbreviation, while AD is a Latin one?](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ula0h/why_is_bc_an_english_abbreviation_while_ad_is_a/)\n\n* [When Did the World Agree That the Year 2012 for Everybody?](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vd7fc/when_did_the_world_agree_that_the_year_2012_for/)\n\n* [How do humans really know what year it is? What historical events started us from BCE to CE?](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vjp3j/how_do_humans_really_know_what_year_it_is_what/)\n\n* [Who or what group of people decided the switch from BC to AD, and why?](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wu47z/who_or_what_group_of_people_decided_the_switch/)\n\n* [At what point did society begin referring to the year in modern terms (2012 etc)](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/x9ofm/at_what_point_did_society_begin_referring_to_the/)\n\n* [When did people start recognizing the year they loved in?](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zn257/when_did_people_start_recognizing_the_year_they/)\n\n\n* [Who decided that 2,012 years ago, the common era began?](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zsn07/who_decided_that_2012_years_ago_the_common_era/)\n\n* [When did people start writing the current date?](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10u5bv/when_did_people_start_writing_the_current_date/)\n\n* [Is there a year zero?](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/121xhe/is_there_a_year_zero/)\n\n* [When did the current calendar come into play? And when did they decide to use BC and AD?](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/139ndg/when_did_the_current_calendar_come_into_play_and/)\n\n* [How did civilizations determine what \"year\" it was before an \"international\" year was established?](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/14czyz/how_did_civilizations_determine_what_year_it_was/)\n\n\n* [How was time measured in the west before the christian era?](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/14jl9j/how_was_time_measured_in_the_west_before_the/)\n\n* [AD = Anno Domini, BC = Before Christ. Why is one Latin and the other English?](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/14rkff/ad_anno_domini_bc_before_christ_why_is_one_latin/)\n\nThis question comes up so often that I've now developed [a standard answer](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/x9ofm/at_what_point_did_society_begin_referring_to_the/c5kg94q) to it.\n\n\n*EDIT: Adding more repetitions of this question.*",
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"body": "**On Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder before the modern era.**\n\n* http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vey09/is_there_any_information_on_posttraumatic_stress/\n* http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/uqkub/did_soldiers_in_the_middle_ages_get_ptsd_if_so/\n* http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/w202l/how_prevalent_was_shell_shock_or_ptsd_before_ww1/\n* http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zft8w/how_prevalent_was_ptsd_and_similar_psycotic/\n* http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wnor5/is_there_any_evidence_that_ptsd_spanned_the/\n\nThe fact that it's only 5 is mildly surprising...\n\n**Historicity of the Bible/Jesus Christ**\n\n* http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vhcw2/how_much_of_the_bible_is_historical/\n* http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/t8mtj/historical_authenticity_of_apostles_paul/\n* http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rubhc/so_what_do_we_actually_know_about_the_life/\n* http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ryagn/the_jews_the_pyramids_and_the_plagues/\n* http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/nwh3d/did_jesus_die_on_a_cross/\n* http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/v2i4v/is_there_any_even_the_slightest_amount_of/\n* http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vr0qu/what_is_the_historical_proof_for_jesus_christ/\n* http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xdkbt/in_terms_of_historical_accuracy_which_is_more/\n* http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/npdil/what_historical_facts_do_we_know_about_jesus/\n* http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xlmaw/what_is_the_oldest_document_referencing_jesus/\n* http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/y9b9y/i_found_a_book_suggesting_the_jesus_christ_was/\n* http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ngqkv/a_book_i_recently_read_titled_roman_warfare/\n* http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/twdyv/what_do_we_really_know_about_jesus_christ/\n* http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/x9a7l/as_i_understand_it_most_historians_agree_that/\n\nNow that's a little more like it... jeeeeez.",
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"body": "People's history of the United States\n\nhttp://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/uo4zh/meta_lets_have_a_serious_talk_about_howard_zinn/\n\nhttp://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/umph1/im_thinking_of_reading_a_peoples_history_by/\n\nhttp://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rzauq/howard_zinn_go/\n\nGuns Germans and Steel\n\nhttp://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wd6jt/what_do_you_think_of_guns_germs_and_steel/\n\nhttp://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ui5eu/are_there_other_works_like_guns_germs_steel_by/\n\nhttp://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ypia3/what_are_the_problems_with_the_book_guns_germs/",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6xzwgv/monday_methods/ | 6xzwgv | 10 | t3_6xzwgv | Monday Methods | History interpretation and how to get some
During three decades of administering a state historic preservation office, one of my mandates was the care of the Virginia City National Historic Landmark District in Nevada. It witnessed a significant gold and silver strike; it gave birth to much of modern mining technology, and it inspired the TV show “Bonanza.”
While my first book on the topic appeared in 1998 – [The Roar and the Silence: A History of Virginia City and the Comstock Lode](https://www.amazon.com/Roar-Silence-Virginia-Shepperson-Humanities/dp/0874173205/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8) – I revisited the subject in 2012 with a thirty-year retrospective intended to summarize what had passed before my gaze in the form of primary sources, archaeology, architecture, cemeteries, and folklore. The resulting [Virginia City: Secrets of a Western Past](https://www.amazon.com/Virginia-City-Historical-Archaeology-American/dp/0803238487/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8) was intended to offer intimate insights, but also to offer paths for interpreting the past.
Throughout my career, I stressed the need to frame information with meaning. I found that the public seeks to understand the past beyond just “the facts.” For me, interpretation is central to the pursuit of history and to making sense of the cacophony of information that humanity produces.
Examples – Tabasco Pepper Sauce!
I began my 2012 work on Virginia City with a [Tabasco Pepper Sauce bottle](http://imgur.com/7J1IGW2) excavated from an African American saloon operating between 1866 to 1875. Research dated the bottle to near the beginning of the Louisiana company’s start in 1868. An excavation of the Tabasco Pepper Sauce home site uncovered early expressions of bottle types, revealing that our example was unique and likely the oldest surviving one with the [Tabasco Pepper Sauce imprint](http://imgur.com/8P5ohaZ). In addition, the earliest company records indicate importations to the East but not the West.
What does this information mean? Our team viewed the artifact in several ways. It underscored the cosmopolitan nature of Virginia City. Also, corporate records were incomplete since this demonstrated early exportation to the West. Most importantly the African American saloon offered excellent cuisine – in addition to Tabasco Pepper Sauce, faunal evidence indicated that this saloon had the best cuts of meat when compared to three other excavated bars.
The bottle was not simply a curiosity. It shed light on several aspects of the past.
A rathole mine
Another archaeological expedition – again discussed in the 2012 book – documented a [rathole mine](http://imgur.com/5YrYC80) – an “after-hours” excavation undertaken by miners seeking their fortune aside from the salary they garnered during a regular shift. Modern miners had opened the adit and invited my office to document what they found including timber supports, [a ventilation system](http://imgur.com/rAslJ57), [tools](http://imgur.com/NDeyINM), and [a rail system for carts](http://imgur.com/lzmLmXQ). It was an excellent opportunity to understand life in a nineteenth-century mine.
That said – ALWAYS STAY OUT OF ABANDONED MINES – people die every year exploring these deadly places. In hindsight, we were stupid to go there even with miners as guides.
The final report – [Little Rathole on the Big Bonanza](https://www.academia.edu/32339760/Little_Rathole_on_the_Big_Bonanza) – interpreted what we found. Since 1883, historians have stressed the technological importance of Virginia City: many techniques and inventions debuted there, and it influenced international mining for decades afterwards. And yet, our rathole mine exhibited old-fashioned, even late-medieval technology.
William White (my staff historical archaeologist and co-author) and I arrived at an interpretation of our site: Virginia City was on the technological vanguard, but reality sometimes contradicts the accepted narrative. These after-hours miners pursued their ambition inexpensively, employing older approaches to mining.
It is good to remember that while histories may be accurate, humanity is diverse and people often look backward even when it seems everyone was looking forward.
A bridegroom corpse come to fetch his bride
Switching to Europe: a widespread legend describes a young man killed in a foreign war, leaving his betrothed not knowing his fate and bereaved by his absence. The story tells how he returns one night and takes her on horseback to charge across the moonlit landscape only to arrive at his grave just as the cock crows. The young woman realizes he is a corpse and manages to escape. She then tells her story to her family, dying afterwards of grief and shock.
In 1982, I attended a seminar in Dublin, Ireland, providing extensive details about Irish manifestations of the legend. While it was an excellent presentation, I wondered if it could be taken a step further. That evening, I received a letter from an American grad student pondering what she might do with a lot of information about a medieval women’s religious sect. In response to her and with the Irish seminar in mind, I arrived at a series of questions one might ask of information uncovered by research.
Three decades later, I addressed the revenant bridegroom in Cornwall. A striking aspect of the nineteenth-century Cornish legends was that a boat often replaced the horse, and the young man was a sailor lost at sea rather than a soldier killed in battle. The function of the full moon changed, and the woman failed to survive the evening since she was drowned in her dead lover’s embrace. I concluded that Cornish storytellers had adapted the legend to fit the environment and economy of Cornwall, and I proposed that this change is what the great Swedish folklorist Carl Wilhelm von Sydow (1878-1952) suggested happened with folklore as it diffused from one place to the next. Historical documents served to place Cornish folklore into a larger context.
How to interpret
By the way, I sent a letter to that American grad student back in 1982 with a list of “Five Questions of History” – thoughts on how to transform a dry recounting of facts into something with meaning. I don’t have those original five questions – and I’m sure others could improve them. For better or worse, these are the questions as well as I can remember:
What does this information say about the people of this time and place and/or how does this compare with similar situations in other times and/or places? Comparison can often lend insight. These related questions can be taken too far, so one needs to resist the impulse to use a little bit of information to draw expansive conclusions.
How does this information affect what we understand about how this element of society changed over time? This is related to the first question, but it asks for a comparison over time within the same area.
How does this information fit in with what other scholars have maintained about this or similar situations? This is a narrow historiographical question (as opposed to the following); this seeks to challenge or support histories that have also tackled this subject.
How have historians viewed this subject and how has perception changed over time? This calls for a historiographical treatment with the examination of the full spectrum of historians over time; it can be less argumentative than the previous question.
What does this information say about the nature of humanity? This question is probably best left to senior scholars – but it often attracts young historians: tread carefully!!! I place it here at the end of the list to make ourselves aware that if we lean in this direction we need to exercise caution.
With all this, perhaps we can discuss the interpretation of the past and how to find meaning in the chapters of the human experience. | 69 | 0.86 | null | false | 1,504,526,358 | [
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"body": "Thanks... I study German history and have always wanted to comment here. I am just starting out, however I believe that the historiographical questions don't have to be narrow.\n\nEven though they may be an extra complication for people just starting in the subject, knowing that your subject has been studied by many other people makes it partly appear like a conversation of theory sharing and disputing between the many historians. \n\nI do agree however trying to extrapolate immediately the 'nature of humanity'... is kind of hard, and possible impossible in some cases. \n\nThank you for reminding me why history is worthwhile. ",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/co2515/why_did_regiments_in_the_military_put_people_of/ | co2515 | 4 | t3_co2515 | Why did regiments in the military put people of the same race, ethnicity, religion, etc. together instead of mixing them all in | This happened more in American history, especially during the civil war. Why was ther a regiment of Jews or a separate regiment for African Americans. | 12 | 0.71 | null | false | 1,565,356,109 | [
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"body": "This is a little vague. The text of the question implies that you primarily mean the American army of the Civil War (or, presumably, the Union and Confederate armies), but it isn't clear whether you mean other militaries too, for which there are rather a few reasons corresponding to the multiple periods, cultures and socio-political situations. Do you have one military in mind, or many?",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1l08dt/how_do_you_guys_feel_about_the_history_in_the/ | 1l08dt | 30 | t3_1l08dt | How do you guys feel about the history in the Youtube video series Crash Course? | [Crash Course ](http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX6b17PVsYBQ0ip5gyeme-Q)is a pretty interesting youtube channel that does short courses on Science, History, and sometimes literature. They do not dive very deeply into each subject but they do hint at subjects being deeper then popular understandings of the stories lead on.
For instance [Captain Cooks Death](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yXNrLTddME&list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9&index=27), he hints at the how history is shaped by the people who write and that view becomes popular and gets mistaken for facts (like Edison inventing the light bulb, or Franklin discovering electricity with a kite). How modern historians have to debate these issues.
Also one of my favorite facts that he brought up in this video [Which is that the African slavery idea was in part a Muslim idea as well as a white christian one. ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9&feature=player_detailpage&v=dnV_MTFEGIY#t=547)
Although the author John Green is fairly popular here on Reddit and is a user, /u/thesoundandthefury, his Crash Course videos don't seem to be getting posted too often so I am beginning to wonder if it has to do with the quality of his work.
Recently over in the subreddit, [WWI](http://www.reddit.com/r/wwi/), [a video was posted](http://www.reddit.com/r/wwi/comments/1kmch3/archdukes_cynicism_and_world_war_i_crash_course/) and of the few people that commented on it did not much care for it. Mostly apparently for his wit and not taking the topic in a more serious matter, some of the problems that /u/NMW brought up went completely over my head. But it as far as I am concern went in to more detail then most American history classes did. And attacked the subject in a more original way that I have seen most televised programs done. Even though he comes to basically the same conclusion. And he empathizes the one thing that I find the most dramatic about WWI the end of the romanticizing of war, or at the least the beginning of the end of it.
So what do the Pros think of the channel. | 143 | 0.87 | null | false | 1,377,358,693 | [
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"body": "[This question was asked here multiple times when Crash Course originally started](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/movies#wiki_crash_course_world_history.3A_good_or_bad.3F). I was one of the askers myself.\n\nIt's generally agreed that he gives a nice basic cover of history but the format and scope of his videos force him to simplify and gloss over significant details in world history. It doesn't mean that it's a bad series - I personally really like it - just that it's a decent start for someone interested in history.\n\nMind you, that was about his original World History series, I haven't watched the American History one so maybe it's more in depth.",
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"body": "I think the reason Crash Course isn't posted here very often is because it's basically the antithesis of the philosophy of this sub. AskHistorians at its best is about in-depth answers to very specific questions, Crash Course is about broad answers to broad questions. It also uses history in a narrative form that doesn't really gel with how the sub is set up. \n\nI love Crash Course and I love the sub, they are both examples of pretty good historical conversation on the internet and should both be encouraged. But just because they are both credible doesn't mean we should automatically bind them together. If we start believing that there is so little good history available on the internet that it all needs to be in one incestuous box we're going to limit the scope of the growth of these platforms. Let them come together when they will but remain separated by their different aims. ",
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"body": "As a current undergraduate student I was linked to his video about the Roman Empire when I was studying for finals. I found it did a really good job of recapping and neatly summarizing most things that I had learned from my professor while also adding odd facts about the significant events and people. So not only was he hitting on the general knowledge of the topic that you would learn in an ancient rome course, for me he brought it to a more relatable and understandable level by commenting on the abilities and attitudes of critical historical figures. I enjoyed it and it made me watch more of his unrelated videos.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7zy1xb/what_native_american_cooking_traditions_have_made/ | 7zy1xb | 7 | t3_7zy1xb | What Native American cooking traditions have made their way into other cultures' cuisines? | I was just talking to my brother about his trip to Paris, and he commented on how there were many great restaurants (of course). He said that these restaurants not only featured French food, but also represented regions France had colonized in its history (North African, Vietnamese, etc.).
I jokingly asked him if there were any good Native American restaurants, but then I wondered if and how Native American cooking traditions made their way to other cultures and cuisines during the age of colonialism. Are there any food traditions that we see today around the world in countries that occupied North America and interacted with Native Americans? | 50 | 0.87 | null | false | 1,519,493,469 | [
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"body": "Many of the foods eaten today in Mexico have their roots in pre-Columbian indigenous cuisine. Mexico is, after all, a part of North America. Everytime you eat a taco, a tamale, a bowl of pozole, drink hot cocoa, add chili powder or fresh chillies to a dish, eat popcorn or corn on the cob, and drink a shot of tequila you are consuming Native American foods and cooking traditions. \n\nIf you like, you can check out some previously asked questions on Mesoamerican cooking that I have answered.\n\n* [What did the average meal look like in the Aztec and Inca Empires?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/57i18l/what_did_the_average_meal_look_like_in_the_aztec/d8sezwr/)\n\n* [How did they make hot cocoa–or any other kind of chocolate–before 1492](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3dfzf2/how_did_they_make_hot_cocoaor_any_other_kind_of/)\n\n* [Was enduring the consumption of extremely capsaicin rich foods tied to masculinity in the Aztec culture? Did the language reflect differences of \"strength\" of various plants or is that a product of later cultivation?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5us4ad/was_enduring_the_consumption_of_extremely/)\n\n* [\nHow did Native Americans eat pumpkin?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3gsorj/how_did_native_americans_eat_pumpkin/)\n\n* [What kinds of alcoholic beverages did the Native Americans/First Nations consume?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3dynjb/what_kinds_of_alcoholic_beverages_did_the_native/)\n\n* [Is it true that \"pozole\" was invented by Aztecs and that the meat that was used was human? And that they would make it spicy to mask the flavor of human meat?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5i8erd/is_it_true_that_pozole_was_invented_by_aztecs_and/)\n\n* [What pollinated North America before bees?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/23n79x/what_pollinated_north_america_before_bees/)\n\n* [Do we have recipes for the fermented chocolate drink favored by the Maya?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5mtfz9/do_we_have_recipes_for_the_fermented_chocolate/dc7edwg/)\n\nAnd you may also be interested in these two other topics\n\n* [What was Native American cuisine like before the Europeans invaded?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/30g7zz/what_was_native_american_cuisine_like_before_the/cpsb3ml/) by /u/RioAbajo\n\n* [What do we know about Native American cuisine?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/71cyfg/what_do_we_know_about_native_american_cuisine/) by /u/ThucydidesWasAwesome, /u/retarredroof, and /u/MirandaTheSavage",
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"body": "I know this doesn't answer the question you asked here, but I think you would be interested in an earlier post of mine:\n\n* [Where are all the Native American restaurants? Was such a thing ever popular in the US?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7b57sq/where_are_all_the_native_american_restaurants_was/dpfvcw5/)",
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"body": "\"Native American\" is a pretty broad term, so I'll restrict my discussion to Southeastern Natives and Mississippian Peoples.\n\nThe most pervasive aspect of Native American food culture in modern American cooking would have to be corn maize. \"Corn\" was originally a general British term for grain that came to be almost exclusively identified with maize in the USA and Canada. European settlers usually described maize as \"Indian corn.\" Maize was one of the [\"three sisters\"](https://www.almanac.com/sites/default/files/users/Almanac%20Staff/3sisters.jpg), along with beans and squash, that formed the bedrock of Algonquian and Iroquois diet. Maize present in some form in nearly every North American culture. While corn could be consumed raw or roasted, Natives frequently ground maize into meal and used it to make what we now identify as [cornbread](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Skillet_cornbread_%28cropped%29.jpg).\n\nOriginally, Europeans despised \"Indian bread\" as a poor-man's food and a poor substitute for wheat bread. It maintained a strong present in American agriculture despite this stigma (which it eventually overcame) because of low costs and abundant yields on maize. It was especially popular as a source of food for African slaves because corn bread was very calorie-dense and filling on top of being very cheap.\n\nWhile corn and cornmeal has entered the American diet from several different angles (corn-on-the-cob, maize tortillas, etc.) its strongest impact is on soul food and Southern food culture. Black Americans did not abandon cornbread as a staple of their diet after Emancipation and retained a very strong presence in soul food culture. Southern (as in former Confederate) Americans also maintained a strong culture of maize cultivation and consumption for similar reasons (cheap, abundant, highly flexible). As a result, cornmeal is ubiquitous to Southern cooking. This manifests in a number of ways, such as simple cornbread, using cornmeal in the bread batter for fried foods, [corn grits as a staple breakfast food and side-dish](https://tastebudsmgmt.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Roasted-Corn-Grits.jpg), [corndogs](https://www.fifteenspatulas.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/FSC_9284-2-640x359.jpg),etc.\n\n***Sources:***\n\n- *Histories of Maize: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Prehistory, Linguistics, Biogeography, Domestication, and Evolution of Maize*, by John E. Staller and Robert H. Tykot\n\n- *The Story of Corn*, by Betty Fussell",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c25m0l/is_there_a_history_of_christianity_or_islam_in/ | c25m0l | 6 | t3_c25m0l | Is there a history of Christianity or Islam in Africa before colonization? | I'm mostly interested in Christianity in this case. Many black Americans are Christian which still surprises me since I always assumed that it was a popular fact that Africans (not all but a lot) had the Bible forced upon them so I'm curious as to why many black people still believe in Christianity. I figured that maybe I'm way off base and there actually is a history of it. | 8 | 0.8 | null | false | 1,560,881,200 | [
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"body": "/u/Compieuter wrote [an answer a while back](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/77tmgv/what_did_european_christians_in_the_middle_ages/dopakov/) on European Christians and the Ethiopian Church in the middle ages that may be relevant.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10kvwhn/every_time_i_mention_ronald_reagan_to_my_father/ | 10kvwhn | 58 | t3_10kvwhn | Every time I mention Ronald Reagan to my father, he says that he "arguably won the Cold War". Was Reagan's presidency an important factor in ending the Could War? | I was under the impression that it ended due to the USSR's economic woes and that Reagan wasn't a major factor. | 1,066 | 0.94 | null | false | 1,674,643,677 | [
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"body": "It depends. First I'll tackle the myth, which is pretty persistent, namely that Reagan's military spending (or sometimes strictly that related to the Strategic Defense Initiative aka \"Star Wars\") bankrupted the USSR and ended the Cold War. A repost of an old [answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8cnm73/comment/dxgq0lh/) of mine:\n\n**Part I**\n\nThe short answer is that while the Soviet Union did collapse in no small part because of budget deficits and economic stability, and while SDI did play a complicated role in arms control negotiations towards the end of the Cold War, responses to SDI were not a major factor in either the collapse of the Soviet Union, nor in the end of the Cold War.\n\nFirst, about the Strategic Defense Initiative. SDI, simply, was a defense program that was supposed to render nuclear weapons obsolete by creating a system of anti-ballistic missiles (or lasers) that would be able to intercept any Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles with nuclear warheads fired at the United States or its allies. The first call for such a program was in President Reagan’s “Address to the Nation on Defense and National Security”, [given]( https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/archives/speeches/1983/32383d.htm) on March 23, 1983:\n\n>”What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?\nI know this is a formidable, technical task, one that may not be accomplished before the end of this century. Yet, current technology has attained a level of sophistication where it's reasonable for us to begin this effort. It will take years, probably decades of effort on many fronts. There will be failures and setbacks, just as there will be successes and breakthroughs. And as we proceed, we must remain constant in preserving the nuclear deterrent and maintaining a solid capability for flexible response. But isn't it worth every investment necessary to free the world from the threat of nuclear war? We know it is.”\n\nNow, while this was a momentous announcement, it is largely a concluding section to a larger speech, one that effectively is given to justify increased US military spending since Reagan came to office in 1981. The general thrust of the speech was: “the Soviets have increased their military spending and research since the 1970s, the US has fallen behind, and needs to spend more to catch up.” Small note: while it has been argued, with some documentary evidence from Reagan’s diary, that the film “The Day After” had a profound influence on his desire to eliminate the nuclear threat, that made-for-TV film was broadcast in November 1983, some eight months after this national address.\n\nCongress [appropriated]( https://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/12/us/cost-of-missile-defense-put-at-70-billion-by-1993.html) $1.39 billion for the initiative in 1984, but this was largely for research. The project was considered to have a final cost of $70 billion, soon [rising]( http://articles.latimes.com/1988-06-12/news/mn-7383_1_star-wars) to $170 billion, with no operational defense before 2000. Ultimately SDI was renamed in 1993, and then reorganized again in 2002 as the Missile Defense Agency. While it continues to conduct anti-ballistic missile research, the results have been mixed, and to date there is no ballistic missile shield rendering nuclear weapons obsolete.\n\nSo, so much for SDI. Now let’s look at the Soviet response to the program. The impact that the announcement of SDI had on Soviet strategic thinking has been debated. First, it’s worth noting that the Soviet defense industry and the Politburo *did* plan responses to SDI:\n\n>A decision of the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers of 15 July 1985 approved a number of \"long-term research and development programs aimed at exploring the ways to create a multi-layered defense system with ground-based and space-based elements.\" It should be noted that no commitment to deployment of any of these systems was made at the time. The goal of the research and development effort was \"to create by 1995 a technical and technological base in case the deployment of a multi-layered missile defense system would be necessary.\"\n\nThese “symmetric” defense responses largely revolved around developing a ground-based missile defense, and a space-based defense. However, it’s also important to note that the Soviet ministries proposing these measures were largely repackaging projects that they already had on the books, rather than creating entirely new systems from scratch, and that in any case no development to the point of deployment was considered for at least a decade. Furthermore, Soviet ministries involved in defense projects were confident in developing “asymmetric” responses to SDI (ie, mechanisms for allowing ICBMs to bypass SDI defenses). \n\nUltimately, as stated by Pavel Podvig, an independent analyst on Soviet and Russian nuclear forces:\n\n>”The new evidence on the Soviet response to SDI largely corroborates the prevailing view that the Soviet Union eventually realized that this program does not present a danger to its security, for it could be relatively easily countered with simple and effective countermeasures. The evidence also helps answer some important questions about the concerns that the Soviet Union had about the U.S. program, the reasoning behind the choices that the Soviet leadership made, and the process that led to those choices.\n\nSo SDI does not seem to have greatly altered Soviet military spending. \n\nWhich is not to say that the Soviet government did not care about SDI! The key difference is that it is not that SDI caused a new round of massive military spending, but that there was the fear that it and similar programs might at a time when Gorbachev was already committed to lowering defense expenditures. It clearly was a major item in arms control negotiations between the US and Soviet Union, most notably in the Reykjavik Summit in October of 1986: Gorbachev offered massive reductions in nuclear weapons if Reagan would agree to scrap deployment of (the then-nonexistent) SDI. Reagan refused, but offered to share the technology with the Soviet Union, which Gorbachev was suspicious about (“You don’t even want to share petroleum equipment, automatic machine tools, or equipment for dairies, while sharing SDI would be a second American revolution.”). The end result was that both parties walked away without any agreement. As Reagan noted: “Gorbachev is adamant we must cave in our SDI – well, this will be a case of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.”\n\nSDI played a major role in US-Soviet arms control negotiations in the 1980s, but it was more of a complicating factor, rather than a decisive factor – if anything it made coming to a comprehensive arms control agreement more difficult. \n\nNow, I’d like to turn to the Soviet economy and its role in the Soviet collapse.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10sgkzn/the_cia_is_infamous_for_its_abuses_of_power_mk/ | 10sgkzn | 30 | t3_10sgkzn | The CIA is infamous for its abuses of power. MK Ultra, smuggling crack, black sites, torture, coups, etc. How does that compare to their competition? During the Cold War what were the worst abuses of KGB power? How does it compare in lethality to the CIA? Which agency killed more innocent people? | 1,269 | 0.91 | null | false | 1,675,417,908 | [
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"body": "So personally I'm not sure we can really just do a balance sheet for comparison, and I would suspect things get really murky very fast. Does the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem count because the CIA supported the South Vietnamese coup plotters, or does it not count because the CIA recommended Diem's exile, and Kennedy was reportedly very shocked when news of Diem's death reached him?\n\nBut anyways, I wanted to give a little background on the KGB specifically. Mostly because it really isn't accurate to even assume it's the equivalent of the CIA - the KGB was *much* larger an institution, and its predecessor organizations even larger than that. \n\nA brief history of Soviet secret police forces is here. After gaining power in 1917, the Bolsheviks organized the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (known by it's Russian Initials CheKa - intelligence forces to this day in Russia often get called Chekists). It was superceded in 1922 by the State Political Directorate (GPU) which became the All Union State Political Directorate (OGPU) the following year. *That* became the State Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) in 1934. The NKVD was then split into a Ministry of Internal Affairs and a Ministry of State Security in 1946, and the MGB was renamed the Committee of State Security (KGB) in 1954. \n\nSo already it's a little hard to talk about a comparison, because are we *just* talking about the KGB, or its earlier iterations back to 1917? In contrast, the CIA was formed in 1947, and had a temporary wartime antecedent in the Office of Strategic Services during 1942-1945. \n\nThe NKVD in particular is of note because if we're including it, then we're not just including secret police and spy services, but a larger organization that contained those functions and basically all criminal and judicial functions in the USSR. The NKVD carried out the Great Purges of the late 1930s, which saw hundreds of thousands of executions and millions of gulag sentences (and the NKVD ran the gulag system as well). I have written more on the gulag system [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tk94yc/what_makes_a_gulag_well_a_gulag_why_do_we_call_it/i1pclgq/), and on gulag mortality [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/l4p2of/official_soviet_records_for_gulag_deaths_are/gkq41ff/) - most historians put the gulag death total around 1.5 to 1.7 million people. The NKVD also had its own internal troops that among other things brutally put down insurgencies in the Baltics and western Ukraine after World War II, and was directly involved in building similar regime institutions in Eastern Bloc countries. I have written about the insurgencies in the western Soviet Union after 1945 [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/d8yrgy/proportionately_the_number_baltic_guerilla/f1eqfwm/)., and some background on the Soviet control of Eastern Europe in the 1940s and 1950s [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/f286yu/why_did_the_wwii_allied_powers_allow_the_ussr_to/fhbojrx/).\n\nEven if we just focus on the slimmed down KGB of 1954-1991, it had a *vast* array of directorates responsible for many aspects of Soviet rule: foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence, military counter-intelligence (basically - the political officers in the military), transportation security, cryptography, 40,000 security personnel for CPSU leaders and for sensitive installations, the Soviet Border Troops who numbered about 250,000 in the late 1980s, a wide variety of research and development sites, control of the telephone lines, and several special operations groups like Alpha Group and Vympel Group, as well as republic-level KGBs in each of the non-Russian SSRs. Even the FSB of today's Russia doesn't have nearly this kind of reach, as the Russian portions of the KGB was broken up into a number of \"power ministries\" after 1991. The FSB has only been able to consolidate some of these under its umbrella. I have an answer as to what happened to the KGB with the fall of the USSR [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9lna01/how_did_yeltsin_gain_control_of_the_armypolice/e788qwv/), and some information on the post-Soviet \"power ministries\" [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tg7641/how_genuine_was_boris_yeltsins_democratic_reforms/i11pfki/).\n\nI point this out because while the KGB was an opponent of the CIA in foreign espionage and in special operations, the KGB did vastly more, and is comparable to the CIA, NSA, FBI, Border Patrol, and Secret Service, plus other functions like censorship and control of communications networks that the US doesn't really have a federal governmental agency for.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12o9sok/podcast_recommendations_on_the_cold_war/ | 12o9sok | 2 | t3_12o9sok | Podcast recommendations on the Cold War? |
Preferably by a professional historian that takes a critical view of both the imperialism of the US and the Soviet Union.
Edit: academic language preferred | 24 | 0.82 | null | false | 1,681,654,530 | [
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12ytoxf/following_the_end_of_the_cold_war_were_there_any/ | 12ytoxf | 2 | t3_12ytoxf | Following the end of the Cold War, were there any substantial efforts or attempts in the newly formed post-Soviet countries (excluding Russia) to restore or establish any form of monarchy ? | I only say excluding Russia because I feel the discourse surrounding a Romanov restoration is pretty well documented at this point, and I'd like to learn more about other post-Soviet countries.
After the end of the Cold War and the republics of the Soviet Union became independent, many took on the names, borders, and cultural legacies of pre-Soviet states, many of which were monarchies, like the restored Poland, Hungary and Georgia taking their name from monarchies, Ukraine's harkening back to Kievan Rus, and even arguably Mongolia venerating the legacy of Chinghis Khan. And if I understand correctly there was a notable shift from the purported leftist Marxist-Leninist system of the USSR towards more right-wing governments, as well as an upsurge in nationalism and religiosity
With that in mind, did any of the newly founded nations in the former Soviet Union (or even in the former Yugoslavia) see any particularly concerted efforts to form their new governments in monarchies, either by restoring old dynasties or claim the restoration of former royal legacies, or by forming new ones? | 3 | 1 | null | false | 1,682,451,756 | [
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"body": "I will touch only very briefly on Yugoslavia’s Karadordevic dynasty as most of the actions are too recent to class here - King Peter didn’t live to see the end of Socialism there, dying in 1970 due to alcoholism related issues. His son, Alexander, has floated the concept of a Serbian constitutional monarchy and while there is some support for it, he is a pretty peripheral figure given many feel he is more British than Serbian and given his most vocal supporters aren’t big Vucic fans.\n\nWhat I will definitely touch on in detail is Leka Zogu.\n\nLeka was the only son of Albanian monarch King Zog, who fled the country upon the Italian invasion of the country in 1939. Zog himself did his popularity in the nation no help when he brought along with him a large portion of the nation’s gold when fleeing to Greece and ensured that any hopes he may have harboured for returning to the throne after the Second World War would be remote.\n\nLeka was arguably the cause for the Italian invasion given the invasion came two days after his birth as heir to Zog and didn’t set foot in Albania again until 1993, after the fall of Hoxhaism. With a military background and a nomadic existence that saw him once scare off mercenaries sent to capture him by pointing a bazooka at them, Leka ended up as a presumptive strongman in a political vacuum. His main push for return was after the 1997 economic collapse that pushed the nation to the brink of civil war and found no shortage in support. Clad mainly in combats and walking about with a machine gun, his presence put a lot of pressure on Sali Berisha and forced a referendum for the return of the monarchy.\n\nHowever, his problem was timing. The sting was taken out of the unrest as the international community turned on Sali Berisha and the referendum took place at the same time as snap elections. The Socialist Party came to power in a landslide and the return of the monarchy was rejected by 65-35. Leka did not accept the results and claimed it was manipulated leading a protest at the head of an armed crowd - a protest 4 days after the referendum saw many supporters of Leka’s injured and one killed. After initially saying he would stay, he fled the country a few days later and was tried in absentia for sedition. That conviction would eventually be overturned and he would return to Albania in the early 2000s but lived quietly.\n\nHis son (also Leka) still lives in Albania and has been floated as a potential president of the nation.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12kpbf4/during_the_height_of_the_cold_war_how_hard_was_it/ | 12kpbf4 | 3 | t3_12kpbf4 | During the height of the Cold War, how hard was it to travel from the US to USSR for a common citizen? | As above, how hard was it to travel between New York & Moscow on a return trip for an average American & vice versa for an average Russian. During the height of the Cold War? Assuming they could afford to go. | 3 | 0.71 | null | false | 1,681,392,681 | [
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"body": "Not to discourage further answers, but you might be interested in this [answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10od0w9/how_did_an_american_get_a_tourist_visa_to_the/j6ft0fy/) I wrote that has some additional information from u/kieslowskifan and u/DrMalcolmCraig. That covers the \"American tourist to the Soviet Union\" angle.\n\nFor Soviet citizens traveling abroad, I have an answer [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pejfni/i_am_an_average_soviet_citizen_who_wish_to_go_on/haxxlqy/). To be honest, while Soviet citizens did travel to the US during the Cold War, you'd need so many security screenings and official approvals for a formal visit that you'd essentially be a senior party or governmental official. Individual tourism (as opposed to joining a group tour or a delegation) was just not really a thing for Soviet citizens, nor was freedom to travel (ie, the ability to travel without first securing an exit visa).",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10xuw01/the_us_orchestrated_three_regional_security/ | 10xuw01 | 5 | t3_10xuw01 | The U.S orchestrated three regional security organizations during the Cold War (NATO, SEATO, and CENTO). Why did NATO become the only one that still exists, while SEATO and CENTO were both dissolved in the 1970s? | 716 | 0.97 | null | false | 1,675,949,683 | [
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"body": "While we wait for an answer that also covers CENTO, you might be interested in [this answer](https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5hqafi/seato_was_southeast_asias_answer_to_nato_but_it/db3668d/) by /u/NotAWittyFucker that covers SEATO specifically.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/110wabu/did_the_ussr_or_the_usa_show_more_restraint_with/ | 110wabu | 10 | t3_110wabu | Did the USSR or the USA show more restraint with regards to how nuclear weapons were handled during the Cold War? | Is there a clear answer to this? I want to say the US handled their nuclear weapons better than the USSR handled their nuclear weapons since the US is a democracy. But I don’t know for sure if this was the case. Any insight into this historians? | 5 | 0.62 | null | false | 1,676,252,873 | [
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"body": "I think one needs a clear definition of \"restraint,\" and I don't know what that would be. Would you consider explicitly threatening non-nuclear states with a nuclear attack a lack of restraint? The US did this several times (such as during the Taiwan Strait Crises). Would you consider flying around live nukes on failure-prone planes a form of restraint, and continue doing so even after several dropped said nukes on both US and foreign soil? Would you consider putting thousands of nukes overseas at foreign bases, with no locks on them that would prevent a rogue soldier or even the host country from using them if they so decided to do so? Would you consider building tens of thousands of nuclear weapons when your enemy had hundreds of times fewer a sign of restraint? Would you consider pre-authorizing commanders to use nuclear weapons under certain circumstances restraint? Would having only one war plan that would involve the annihilation of multiple countries, even if those countries had not entered into the war, be a sign of restraint? What about the one primary war plan being expected to cause the deaths of hundreds of millions of non-combatants? If another country had tested multi-megaton nuclear weapons on a foreign nation that the UN had assigned them to be a protectorate over, would that be restrained? What about a country that set off hundreds of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere on its own soil, seeding its population with radiation? Etc., etc.\n\nI'm not trying to be _that_ judgmental. Just pointing out that a) a lot of US nuclear policy was pretty extreme taken on the face of it, b) the US being a democracy didn't noticeably make it more restrained than non-democratic states (in part, perhaps, because the high level of official secrecy allowed its leaders to do these things largely unobserved), c) that as \"first movers\" in the nuclear arms race, the US was in a position to do a lot of things in a disproportionate way (the USSR was not at \"parity\" with them until the 1970s, and they were really the only nuclear contender), which makes it even harder to judge this question, and d) that perhaps one can imagine a \"restrained\" way to think about nuclear war (e.g., a relatively small arsenal that would not be used for a \"first strike\" attack), but that definitely isn't how the US thought about its arsenal in the Cold War. \n\nOne can judge the US actions as justified or not, as prudent or not, and so on. But \"restrained\" seems like a bit of a loaded term for me. The US didn't deliberately use nuclear weapons in war after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even when it was in positions where it could have without fearing \"mutual assured destruction.\" That's something, I guess. But that feels like kind of a low bar — like congratulating someone for not being a serial killer or something.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10opa6e/during_the_cold_war_if_i_was_a_west_berliner_who/ | 10opa6e | 9 | t3_10opa6e | During the Cold War, if I was a West Berliner who owned a car, could I drive to greater West Germany for holiday or to visit family? | Was there any sort of free passage corridor for civilians or merchants to facilitate travel and commerce between West Berlin and West Germany?
We’re there passport controls or searches?
I guess a sub part of this question would be, what did the Berlin airlift replace? How did things proceed when West Berlin wasn’t blockaded? | 14 | 0.77 | null | false | 1,675,043,120 | [
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"body": "/u/kieslowskifan has previously answered [How did the Allies have access to postwar Berlin if it was so deep in USSR territory?](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/act2p3/how_did_the_allies_have_access_to_post_war_berlin/)\n\nMore answers remain to be written on this popular topic",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/117wfa1/did_the_soviet_union_ever_use_spy_planes_like_the/ | 117wfa1 | 3 | t3_117wfa1 | Did the Soviet Union ever use spy planes like the U-2 during the Cold War? | I know a little bit about how the United States used the U-2 as well as incidents such as Gary Powers being shot down over the Soviet Union and Rudolf Anderson being shot down over Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. However I have not learned about any similar incidents with the Soviet Union. Did the Soviet Union not use spy planes or similar technology besides satellites over the United States? Was there ever an incident for the Soviet Union like the United States had with Gary Powers? If the Soviet Union did not why was this the case when so much done during the Cold War was motivated because the other side was also doing it? | 18 | 0.83 | null | false | 1,676,960,412 | [
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"body": "Alright, let's break this down into pieces. Disclaimer, I do not speak Russian.\n\nBefore we do anything, I'll first quickly explain some terminology used in this answer. \n\nVVS: The acronym for 'Military Air Forces', this refers to the Soviet Air Force. Unlike most of the West, the Soviets segregated their offensive air force and their defensive air force, the V-PVO (Anti-Air Defence Troops). All of the Soviet reconnaissance aircraft were operated by the former. \n\n**IMINT**: imagery intelligence. This refers to intelligence gathered, as the name implies, through images, whether via aerial photography or satellite imagery.\n\n**SIGINT**: signals intelligence. This refers to intelligence gathered through the **interception of signals** - there are two subcategories of SIGINT. They are **COMINT** (communications intelligence) and **ELINT** (electronic intelligence). \n\nThe former concerns signals directly relevant to communication between people, the latter concerns all other electronic signals not directly used in communication. \n\n\n**HUMINT**: human intelligence. This covers all intelligence collected with *person-to-person interaction*. To phrase it more simply, this is what popular culture would usually consider 'spying'. \n\nThere is also MASINT (measurement and signals intelligence), but we won't be using this term here. \n\nNow, let's begin. \n\n\n*i. Did the Soviet Union use spy planes aside from satellites, in the same vein as the US U-2 and later SR-71?* \n\nNo, with an asterisk. The Soviets developed a litany of aircraft with reconnaissance roles. We can separate these into:\n\n i) reconnaissance drones such as the Tupolev Tu-123 and later Tu-141, analogous to the later US D-21. \n\nand ii) reconnaissance variants of existing military aircraft. These are usually denoted by an R (P in Cyrillic, Pазведчик or Razvedchick meaning Reconnaissance/Scout) in the specific model designation of the aircraft such as the Yakovlev Yak-25RV, Yak-28R, Su-24MR and the most famous MiG-25R and its various sub-variants. \n\nSo, why the asterisk? Aside from drones, the Soviets did not really develop an aircraft whose sole purpose was high-altitude reconnaissance overflight in the same vein as the U-2 and SR-71 (granted, the latter's family tree did have an interceptor variant in testing, the YF-12). And even then, the drones only ever flew in testing and in practice. \n\nAt this stage, I must address the elephant in the room, the Myasishchev M-17 and later M-55B. This *is* a dedicated high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, which set records for flight altitude among other factors that still stand today. However, the Soviet and later Russian governments have not, to my knowledge, admitted to any reconnaissance use of this aircraft besides the usage of the M-55 in Arctic/Antarctic stratospheric research in the 1990s, but these research duties all post-date the USSR. The M-17 first flew in 1982 and the M-55 in 1988. \n\nUltimately, we don't know if the Myasishchev aircraft ever flew over the US. \n\n\nWhy is that the case? That brings us to point 2. \n\n*ii. The Soviets did not have a single airbase within feasible range of the United States in the Western Hemisphere, with the exception of Cuba.* \n\nThis is the single biggest reason why nothing like the Gary Powers incident ever occurred with the VVS. The US virtually had 24-hour aerial surveillance over what entered and exited Cuba, especially in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. From a functional perspective, it would have been more or less impossible to fly aircraft anonymously to Cuba, leave Cuba and fly over sensitive airspace in the US, then return to Cuba. This would almost certainly have sparked fury in the diplomatic channels between the US and the USSR (as Cuban diplomatic channels were closed). \n\nSoviet reconnaissance aircraft saw their greatest use in the Middle East and in Afghanistan. The MiG-25R especially saw heavy service in Egypt, performing high-altitude overflights over the Sinai Peninsula (the VVS established a special Soviet reconnaissance detachment, 63rd Independent Air Detachment in 1972), and were often tracked by the Israeli air force, but were never successfully intercepted. Soviet MiG-25s also flew in support of the Egyptians during the Yom Kippur War of 1973. As a side note, the MiG-25 was (and remains, along with its successor the MiG-31) the only aircraft to even come *close* to the SR-71's speed - the MiG-25 could actually track and intercept the SR-71, though still being several kilometers behind. \n\nThe Su-24 reconnaissance variants saw service during the Second Chechen War, although in this role the variants used were reconnaissance/bomber aircraft, not the deliberate high-altitude reconnaissance we're talking about here. \n\n\n*iii. If you want to find incidents on the scale of Gary Powers' shootdown, look not at aircraft, but at HUMINT.*\n\nThe *vast* majority of Soviet intelligence gathering when the US was concerned was done through HUMINT. The geographic scale of the US and the USSR actually significantly contributed to why the former placed such a heavy emphasis on SIGINT and IMINT, and the latter heavily focused on HUMINT. \n\nThe US is significantly smaller than the USSR, and much more urbanized in comparison - which meant that human interaction was far more efficient at gathering information. Contrast this with the USSR, large swathes of which are sparsely (if at all) inhabited, which provides an ideal environment in which to place military or experimental facilities, human travel to which would be significantly more difficult than a simple overflight. I have also seen claims that differences in US and Soviet society also contribute to this 'split', for lack of a better term, but I'm not a sociologist, so I don't feel comfortable tackling this particular angle, and I'll leave it to someone more learned than I.\n\nAs a result, Soviet espionage controversies are *all* HUMINT-related - such as the variety of high-level moles the KGB had, or the physicists who were Soviet spies. \n\n*Conclusion: If the Soviet Union did not why was this the case when so much done during the Cold War was motivated because the other side was also doing it?*\n\nThe Soviets did conduct detailed, wide-ranging, decades-long espionage programs just as the US did. But because of a variety of practical factors, the Soviets placed a much heavier emphasis on HUMINT rather than SIGINT. The end result is the same - both sides spied on each other to an astronomical degree, just in different ways, because of practical geological and geopolitical reasons. \n\nSources: \n\nBolzak, Jerry R. (2012). *Blinding the Enemy: Soviet Tactical Reconnaissance in the Rear Area*. \n\nGordon, Yefim (2022). *Soviet and Russian Special Mission Aircraft*.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/11t6cj2/were_cold_war_fears_and_nuclear_policy_reflected/ | 11t6cj2 | 3 | t3_11t6cj2 | Were Cold War fears and Nuclear Policy reflected in Children's Literature? | Hello!
After the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were there children's books/literature published with the agenda of pushing certain ideas regarding views of communism and nuclear disarmament/armament?
I've searched myself but am struggling to find concrete examples of nuclear age children's literature reflective of these issues. I find this idea of "indoctrination" interesting in light of recent laws concerning children's literature.
Any help or discussion would be greatly appreciated! | 1 | 0.6 | null | false | 1,679,000,933 | [
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"body": "Hi!\n\nThere were definitely children's books published with the agenda of pushing certain ideas regarding views of communism and nuclear disarmament/armament after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One example is the book \"The Bomb\" by William Saroyan, which was published in 1946 and is about a group of kids who find a bomb and have to decide what to do with it. There were also a lot of anti-war and anti-nuclear books published during the Cold War, when fears of nuclear war were at their peak. Some examples of these kinds of books are \"The Day It Rained Forever\" by Ray Bradbury, \"The Girl Who Owned a City\" by O.T. Nelson, and \"The Watcher\" by James Howe.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/11r8eyy/during_the_cold_war_in_the_soviet_union_given/ | 11r8eyy | 2 | t3_11r8eyy | During the Cold War, in the Soviet Union, given news from the outside world was heavily censored, were ordinary Soviets aware of their country’s status as a super-power? | 0 | 0.5 | null | false | 1,678,805,972 | [
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"body": "The Soviet media highlighted the successes of socialism and communism, while exposing the flaws and dangers of capitalism and imperialism. Many Soviets were proud of their country's status as a superpower, as they learned about its achievements in space exploration, sports, arts and culture. Some dissidents and intellectuals sought to access alternative sources of information through underground networks or contacts abroad, but they were a minority among the population. Therefore, many ordinary Soviets had a positive or loyal view of their country's role and reputation in the world.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wic902/in_1983_in_the_midst_of_the_cold_war_the_soviet/ | wic902 | 51 | t3_wic902 | In 1983, in the midst of the Cold War, the Soviet Air Force shot down a civilian flight with a sitting US congressman on board. Given our image of Cold War tensions being as taut as piano wire, how did this not immediately make the war very very hot? | If you'll excuse the flippancy, why do we still have an Earth?
I definitely acknowledge, based on what I've read, that there were several mistakes on the part of both the flight crew and the Soviets, and I'm less interested in placing blame or arguing that either side *should* have escalated than in the fact that, given what I've always heard about the Cold War, after the Soviet Air Force killed a sitting member of the federal government, cooler heads prevailed and led to a diplomatic resolution instead of, you know, the end of the species. | 2,535 | 0.97 | null | false | 1,659,866,732 | [
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"body": "We can't really answer why things _didn't_ happen, other than to say, well, it was not really in anyone's interest to start World War III. \n\nIn the case of the Korean Air Lines 007 shoot-down, it was clear to the US analysts that a) this was probably a mistake, and b) that the best thing the US could do with this mistake was to try to capitalize on it politically. So the response was a heavy diplomatic campaign meant to embarrass the Soviets (who didn't even really want to admit it happened) and to try and take a moral high ground with both domestic and international audiences. \n\n(Whether the US had as much moral high-ground to claim is of course part of what is debated today — the US arguably played a major role in creating the conditions for the shoot-down with their aggressive exercises in violating Soviet airspace in the region as a means of testing out their air defenses, which put the Soviets deeply on-edge.)\n\nNow I am not 100% sure I would say \"cooler heads prevailed,\" and while this is a \"diplomatic\" approach (as opposed to a \"military\" one), it was still pretty aggressive. The Soviets took it as a sign of American bad-faith, and it was interpreted as further evidence that the US was trying to set up the conditions for a massive first-strike attack against the USSR. The US was not, in fact, trying to do this, but that is sort of beyond the point when you are talking about perception. So it was still a fairly aggressive response, and one that was deliberately so. Diplomacy can be aggressive too, although it tends to be less escalatory than actual military operations!\n\nOne can imagine many worlds in which the Cold War went \"hot\" (or at least \"hotter\" than it was, as it was not exactly frigid), in which the decisions went one way or the other. You can imagine a scenario in which the US decided to pursue this issue a different way, or in which the Soviets interpreted the US response another way, and things went in even more dangerous directions than they actually did. To look for a single answer as to why it didn't at any tense moment is probably fruitless at best, and misleading at worse, because it assumes that there was a sort of rationality and control at work. The people who were involved in these moments tended to emphasize that quite a lot of what got everyone through the Cold War was \"luck.\" We can see this as a shorthand way to say, \"there wasn't much of any reason that we had control over\" — luck just means the absence of control, which means that there isn't a necessary, logical, rational answer. (On a serious study of the role of \"luck\" in history and the Cold War in general, [see my article here with a colleague who has spent a lot of time thinking about this issue](https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/08/10/reason-we-havent-had-nuclear-disasters-isnt-careful-planning-its-luck/).) \n\nThe most \"rational\" answer you can offer up is that all of the sides involved understood that there would be huge costs to ultimate escalation, and so worked to avoid that. This is the \"deterrence\" answer. But it only takes you so far. The US approach to the Soviet Union in 1983 was, to a degree, deliberately escalatory — but always stopped short of what the US thought would be \"too risky.\" But the US determination of what is \"too risky\" is not necessarily the same as the Soviet one, and therein lies the possibility for severe miscalculation or error, if one side crosses a \"red line\" of the other without realizing it. The KAL 007 shoot-down itself was an example of just such a miscalculation and error. The best you can say about the aftermath is that the US response pursued a path that it thought would get it what it wanted at a minimal or acceptable cost, and their judgment on that was (to whatever degree of accuracy) good-enough that it didn't break out into war. \n\nThe best overall book I know of on the crises of 1983, with a lot of discussion of KAL 007 and its aftermath (and Able Archer 83, and the Stanislav Petrov incident, and the Pershing II crises, and many other things of that dangerous year) is David Hoffman's _The Dead Hand_.\n\nRelatedly, I am a big fan of [this comic by Zach Weinersmith (SMBC)](https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3994), which espouses the \"Anthroponuclear Multiple Worlds Theory,\" and frequently bring it up when talking to people about the dangers of the Cold War. It's an amusement, of course, but the framework of parallel universes is a way to highlight just how contingent things were in this period — that the survival of the world should not in any serious way be taken for granted.",
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"body": "September 1, 1939 marks the day Hitler invaded Poland and the official start of WW2.\n\nIn a different universe, September 1, 1983 could have marked the start of WW3.\n\n>I know that some of our critics have sounded off that somehow we haven't exacted enough vengeance. Well, vengeance isn't the name of the game. Short of going to war, what would they have us do?\n\n>-- Ronald Reagan, on a call to the Republican Western Regional Conference\n\nRelations _did_ tank due to the incident. Gallup polls showed after that public opinions of Soviets were the worst since 1956 (that'd be the [Hungarian Revolution](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE1FX0Uf01I) when the tanks rolled in). Had the incident happened at a worse moment or especially with a more trigger-happy leader at the helm (say, Goldwater circa the 1960s) things could have turned into a shooting war.\n\n...\n\nOn that fateful September day, Korean Airlines Flight 007 (New York to Anchorage to Seoul) sent a message at 3:23 AM, stating it was at the eastern tip of Hokkaido, Japan. \n\nIt was not. It was more than a hundred miles off course, due to pilot error in regards to setting the autopilot.\n\nAn initial message from Korean Airline claimed it had been forced to land in Soviet territory by their air force. This was entirely untrue, and the Soviets were quick to deny it. As reported on Tokyo radio:\n\n>When Togo [at the Japanese embassy in Russia] questioned the official [from the Soviet Foreign Ministry] whether this meant the missing South Korean airliner was not in Soviet territory, the official replied that it was not within Soviet territory since it had not landed on Soviet territory, Togo told Japanese newsmen. Japanese Embassy sources said later they could not rule out the possibility the ill-fated South Korean plane was shot down by the Soviet Union.\n\nThis was the first mention of the possibility of the plane being shot down, something later confirmed about 24 hours after the plane's disappearance by TASS in an official statement:\n\n>An unidentified plane entered the airspace of the Soviet Union over the Kamchatka Peninsula from the direction of the Pacific Ocean and then for the second time violated the airspace of the USSR over Sakhalin Island on the night from August 31 to September 1. The plane did not have lights, did not respond to queries and did not enter into radio contact.\n\nFighters had been scrambled and shot the plane down. (The lights part is untrue; Major Gennadiy Osipovich, the one who actually launched the missiles, later stated this was one of the lies that cropped up about the incident. Part of the confusion came from the people involved lying to Moscow in order to avoid punishment.)\n\nThe Soviet foreign ministry was initially in the dark as everyone else, although before TASS statement came out the Secretary of State of the US (George Shultz) did receive notice with the information from TASS and a \"possible crash\".\n\nShultz held a press conference the next day:\n\n>At 1821 hours the Korean aircraft was reported by the Soviet pilot at 10,000 meters. At 1826 hours the Soviet pilot reported that he fired a missile and the target was destroyed. At 1830 hours the Korean aircraft was reported by radar at 5,000 meters. At 1838 hours the Korean plane disappeared from the radar screen.\n\nadding that \"We can see no excuse whatsoever for this appalling act.\"\n\nKeep in mind, for this very moment, there was at least some leaning to a fix in Soviet-US relations. National Security Decision Directive Number 42 had been declared by Reagan the year before, calling for \"international cooperative activities\" in space (meaning with Russia). A new de-escalation arms deal was still in the works, and on the very same day as the KAL 007 incident the Agriculture Department announced they had made their first sales of grain to the USSR in a five-year agreement. \n\nThe grain agreement announcement was unfortunate, and there was some concern of sanctions (the traders in Chicago did a big sell-off) but despite the demand of sanctions from some conservatives there was no move to call-off the deal from the President.\n\nThe President's initial response was to give on September 5, a 16 minute speech ([which you can watch here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VA4W1wDMAk)):\n\n>This crime against humanity must never be forgotten, here or throughout the world.\n\nReagan noted, importantly, that this was not the first such incident: KAL 902 had been shot down in a similar manner in 1978, and there was grave concern for the general safety of air travel altogether. His very specific demand is that \n\n>They owe the world an apology and an offer to join the rest of the world in working out a system to protect against this ever happening again. \n\nEven though he called it a \"terroristic\" incident Reagan kept to the same position. Later, Reagan reiterated in an interview with *TIME*:\n\n>Obviously you are tempted to to think about vengeance, but there is no way you can avenge such a thing .... But what you have to look for is what you can do, first of all, to get restitution for the families of the victims, and what you can do to see that this never happens again.\n\nEchoing a similar sentiment, in a service attended by Reagan for the dead at the National Cathedral the Bishop John T. Walker said:\n\n>We cannot accept that the people of the Soviet Union are inherently immoral. Rather, we must believe that the context for this action is suspicion, distrust and fear.\n\nDespite conservatives calling for a much stronger backlash (George Will called Reagan's response \"pathetic\") this was the general attitude of the government, and while the US had some explicit claims that the Soviets knew they were shooting at a civilian aircraft, there was the diplomatic opening to consider the event an accident.\n\nThere was still some diplomatic kerfuffles to be had (including a UN resolution shot down by the USSR's veto), but at the time the ending was essentially a stalemate: the Soviets claimed they shot down a spy plane and would not budge or talk of reparations. 1985 is when things turned around with Gorbachev entering power and (perhaps even more importantly) Shevardnadze becoming head of the Foreign Ministry a few months later. This is when relations started to warm up again, and the airline incident was temporarily put under the rug as more important talks went forward. For example, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty happened two years later, the first agreement that led to a reduction of nuclear arsenals.\n\nIn December of 1990 Shevardnadze gave an official apology to South Korea for the incident and resigned his post.\n\n...\n\nDallin, A. (2022). *Black Box: KAL 007 and the Superpowers*. United States: University of California Press.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10435cn/how_would_a_private_citizen_travel_between_the/ | 10435cn | 5 | t3_10435cn | How would a private citizen travel between the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War, both in terms of physical transport and bureaucratic hurdles? Were there any direct flights at any point? | Following the invasion of Ukraine, many Western countries enacted travel restrictions on Russian nationals and stopped direct flights to Russia. This made me curious if these barriers existed and if so to what extent during the Cold War? | 9 | 0.77 | null | false | 1,672,936,022 | [
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"body": "Just to add some detail on the politics and practicalities of air travel:\n\nDirect flights (i.e., same flight number throughout the journey but with intermediate stops) between the United States and Soviet Union were operated from 1968 (which is when the two countries allowed each other's airliners for the first time) to 1981 and 1986 to the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. Nonstop flights (i.e., the aircraft didn't make any intermediate stops) were available starting in 1988.\n\n \nThe possibility of direct air connections had been discussed since the death of Stalin but wasn't finalized until 1968. Prior to 1968, it was still possible to fly between the countries by changing flights and airliners in a third country, such as Finland, which has a bilateral air service agreement with the Soviet Union starting in 1955, followed by Denmark the next year. Most European countries and even Canada had them by the mid-60s. Flying through Europe, with the flight to the Soviet Union a European airline or Aeroflot (the Soviet carrier) was certainly was an option even after the direct flights were allowed.\n\n \nUnder the 1968 agreement, each country let one airline from the other country into initially one and later two airports. The American airline was Pan Am until the late November 1991, when Delta took over the collapsing airline's European operations. (The Soviet Union slightly outlived Pan Am.) The Soviet airline was, of course, Aeroflot (the world's largest airline at the time). The initial airports were New York-JFK and Moscow-Sheremetyovo. So both Pan Am and Aeroflot starting flying between Moscow and New York a few times a week on July 15, 1968. Later Washington-Dulles and Leningrad were added. Until 1988, these flights stopped to refuel (and in some cases changed planes) in Western Europe and/or Newfoundland. The initial Pan Am New York-Moscow route, for example, stopped in Copenhagen.\n\n \nEconomic problems and political tensions led to the hiatus during the \"Second Cold War\" period: the gap in the early 1980s.\n\n \nFirst let's talk about economics. Although you might have expected it to be the other way around given Pan Am's reputation and the fact Aeroflot was a communist state enterprise, in fact Aeroflot came to dominate the route, even though it was supposed to be equally open to both airlines. Aeroflot was so aggressive because one of the main goals of the Soviet international tourist industry was to get hard currency--the Heinlein piece linked by u/John_UnderHill does a good job of showing how much the Soviet Union tried to squeeze out of Western tourists. Aeroflot (which was supposed to act as Pan Am's sales agent in the Soviet Union) simply refused to sell Pan Am tickets in the Soviet Union. In fact, Soviet citizens were practically unable to leave the Soviet Union by any means other than Aeroflot. At the other end of the route, Aeroflot aggressively courted the American market by giving kickbacks to travel agents and underselling Pan Am. So Pan Am, which had never expected to make much money on the route and had taken it on mostly for the prestige and as a favor to the U.S. government (which had vaguely spoken of subsidies that were never provided), ended up losing its shirt. By the mid-70s over 70 percent of passengers between the two countries were flying Aeroflot. Pan Am responded by trying to cut costs, for example by making the direct flight from New York to Moscow with a giant 747 from New York to Frankfurt (its European hub and a major destination in its own right) and then a smaller 727 from Frankfurt to Moscow. \n\nIn 1978, Pan Am had enough and stopped flying to the Soviet Union as part of a general reduction in flights serving Europe, leaving Aeroflot unchallenged. So interestingly we see the Soviet state enterprise had a profit-making motive and succeeded whereas the American corporation, acting a bit more idealistically or even ideologically, failed.\n\n \nBut then the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, so as a get-tough measure in 1980 Carter forbade Aeroflot to fly to New York. In 1981, Reagan also put Washington off limits because of Soviet repression of the Solidarity movement in Poland, so now there were no more direct flights, and travelers again had to rely on other airlines and transfers in Helsinki or wherever. It's possible that if Pan Am had still been flying the route, it would have continued, though I suspect Brezhnev would have simply banned Pan Am in response. \n\n \nIn 1986, with a new atmosphere of detente, direct service was restored, again with the same four airports and two airlines. While Aeroflot still wanted to make money, it engaged in a fairer competition against Pan Am and introduced better service rather than just relying on the captive Soviet market and low prices. The two airlines even cooperated to offer a non-stop flight from New York to Moscow on a Pan Am-owned and -flown 747 with a mixed cabin crew and half the seats sold by each airline. Aeroflot called this flight, which was first operated on May 14, 1988, the \"Friendship Air Bridge.\" This is also when the Soviet Union started allowing non-Soviet airlines to transit its airspace, so a number of more attractive routes to, for example, India became available. There was further liberalization in 1990 that included more destinations and airlines, but this soon became a moot point.\n\nThe Soviet Union slightly outlived Pan Am as an operational airline, so in late November and December 1991, Pan Am's Soviet routes were operated by Delta.",
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"body": "I’m a former travel agent and have a little insight into the space. There were flights from NY/Washington on Aeroflot to shuttle diplomats and staff. Or regular carriers if you were willing to change in Europe. The flight wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was a bureaucratic visa process and the necessity of using the Soviet travel agency (intourist) on a paid group tourist tour. That was to ensure a minder had eyes on you basically at all times. \n\nFor business purposes, it was similar but I think the visas were initiated by the business unit sponsoring you. You would still be fairly tightly controlled. You couldn’t wander off on your own. My dad was involved on one of these trips as a chemical engineer consultant on a technology transfer trip in 1976. The minders were very real, but fairly polite and spoke English. In the Soviet days, the stores were threadbare and there was little to buy anyway :(. Last time I went to Moscow, the visa still required an invitation, although it could be from the hotel you’re staying at. A throwback to the Soviet days, and a lot of that mindset is still in their culture.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zju48v/during_the_cold_war_what_was_the_history_of/ | zju48v | 5 | t3_zju48v | During the Cold War, what was the history of inter-block academic relations? Would a lab based in Moscow have access to papers published from say the MIT or Paris in the 60s? How about later, in the 70s or 80s? | I'm also pretty interested in abstract computer science and mathematics (stuff like type theory, category theory or linear logic even though that much later here), but I'd be satisfied with an answer about another field, or a more general answer. | 51 | 0.93 | null | false | 1,670,838,092 | [
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"body": "Some time ago I wrote [these three answers](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/gikkp0/why_are_bacteriophages_only_allowed_for_medicine/fqhonrw/) to a question about why bacteriophages were only allowed for medicine in former Soviet Union and some satellites but not in the West that might be relevant to you. Broadly, Soviet Bacteriophage researchers had decent access to western publications but extremely limited access to western conferences, which hampered their ability to follow what western researchers were doing. Western researchers, however, were much more hampered by their almost complete lack of awareness of what their Soviet colleagues were up to.",
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"body": "Admittedly my answer is somewhat limited in scope- this is only information I found tangentially while working on my dissertation so I was unable to deep dive into it- but where it concerns computer science, there was a degree of inter-block exchange; at least, where it concerned the *history* of computer science.\n\nIn 1976 there would be a conference in Los Alamos: specifically, it was intended to better document the history of computing, with representatives from several nations (ranging from Japanese to European academics) being in attendance. Discussing key developments in computing's early history over the course of about a week, the report of the conference notes that a certain Andrei P. Ershov was slated to attend, but found himself unable to- and as such, submitted a paper and abstract detailing both current developments and the history of early computers in the Soviet Union.\n\nNow, Ershov was no small name where it concerned computing in the Soviet Union, having later been at the forefront of computer literacy programs during the last decade of the country's existence; thus, the mention that he was unable to attend speaks to the limited access to conferences mentioned by the other answer. \n\nSources:\n\nAfinogenov, Gregory. \"Andrei Ershov and the Soviet Information Age.\" Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 14, no. 3 (2013): 561-584\n\nBrainerd, John G. “International Research Conference on the History of Computing, Los Alamos, June 10-15, 1976.” Technology and Culture 18, no. 2 (1977): 218–21.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yx3hmc/i_am_a_child_of_the_60s_and_70s_now_that_i_am_in/ | yx3hmc | 8 | t3_yx3hmc | I am a child of the 60s and 70s. Now that I am in my 60s I am trying to understand everything that happened and affected my life so much during those years. Can I get a recommendation for a good and balanced comprehensive history of the Cold War? Thank you in advance. | 52 | 0.93 | null | false | 1,668,626,933 | [
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"body": "If you're trying to get a reasonably balanced one volume history of the Cold War, you might want to check out Odd Arne Westad's *The Cold War: A World History*, or his earlier *The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times*. Westad is important because he has helped shift a lot of the focus of the Cold War from Europe (and specifically from Washington and Moscow) to Latin America, Asia and Africa, where the conflict was often very hot, and had numerous actors across the globe involving themselves for specific goals. \n\nI *guess* I have to mention John Lewis Gaddis and his work, as Gaddis is considered to be the \"dean of Cold War historians\", but he approaches it very much from an American point of view (and a triumphalist one at that). His *We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History* was pretty well received when it came out, but only covers the 1946-1962 period. His *The Cold War: A New History* is a newer one volume book that covers the entire Cold War: on the plus side it's a very concise introduction that covers the major events of that 50 year period (he wrote it for his undergrad students, especially once they started to be too young to have personal memories of the Cold War), but on the other hand it's *very* triumphalist and has very little to say about the world outside of Europe and the US (and gets pretty far into Gaddis' personal and political opinions in the later chapters of the book).",
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"body": "I am assuming you are American. James Patterson's *Grand Expectations* and *Restless Giant* are a good start. They are absolute tomes, but they deal with a little bit of everything in post-WWII American history. James Patterson is also an absolute titan of a scholar, top-notch. \n\nThere are also topical works:\n\n**Vietnam War-**George Herring's *America's Longest War* (older, but still widely considered the best)\n\n**The Sixties**: Weisbrot and Mackenzie's *The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s*\n\nKevin Boyle's *The Shattering: America in the 1960s* (Boyle is known for his narrative skills)\n\n**The Seventies:** Jefferson Cowie's *Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class*\n\n**Cold War:** Mary L. Dudziak's *Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy*\n\n**1968:** Kyle Longley's *LBJ's 1968: Power, Politics, and the Presidency in America's Year of Upheaval\\\\*\n\nMichael Nelson's *Resilient America: Electing Nixon in 1968, Channeling Dissent, and Dividing Government*\n\n​\n\nThese are a few to get you started. Admittedly, they are mostly political histories, but that's my particular field so I have my biases.",
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"body": "I'm currently reading and loving Ronnie D. Lipschitz's *Cold War Fantasies: Film, Fiction, and Foreign Policy*! It's kind of a cool look at Cold War era politics through film and novels from or set in the time period. If you're interested in movies, def give it a shot!",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10sd78y/when_was_the_term_cold_war_first_used_and_when/ | 10sd78y | 2 | t3_10sd78y | When was the term Cold War first used and when was the term widely embraced by the government and historians? | 1 | 0.56 | null | false | 1,675,405,336 | [
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"body": "The first well-known use of the term is usually attributed to George Orwell, [You and the Atomic Bomb](https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/you-and-the-atom-bomb/) (1945): \n\n> For forty or fifty years past, Mr. H. G. Wells and others have been warning us that man is in danger of destroying himself with his own weapons, leaving the ants or some other gregarious species to take over. Anyone who has seen the ruined cities of Germany will find this notion at least thinkable. Nevertheless, looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity. James Burnham’s theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications – that is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of “cold war” with its neighbours.\n\nBut just having it appeared in print, of course, is not the same thing as widely embraced. Bernard Baruch famously used it in a speech in 1947 (\"Let us not be deceived: we are today in the midst of a cold war\"), which is very much a \"mainstreaming\" of the idea in the policy world (Baruch was immensely influential and \"plugged in\"). \n\n[Google Ngrams](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cold+war%2CCold+War&year_start=1940&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3) gives some interesting data on this. Note the difference in capitalization — a distinct shift, especially after the end of it, towards regarding it as a reified entity as opposed to just a statement about a situation. Though looking at [the use of articles before it](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=the+cold+war%2Cthe+Cold+War%2C+a+cold+war&year_start=1940&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3) indicates that \"the cold war\" was a pretty common phrase even during it. \n\nAnyway, an interpretation of the Ngrams data seems to suggest that usage grew over the course of the late 1940s, with a peak in the early 1960s. Then you get a distinct drop in the the 1970s which continues, somewhat surprisingly, through the mid-1980s. Then a huge increase after the 1990s. [Here is the combined data for capitalization differences](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cold+war%2BCold+War&year_start=1940&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3). \n\nOne of the tricky things here is that the reference points for \"the Cold War\" have always been a bit fluid. There have always been some who used it (after the fact) to refer only to the period of the 1940s through the early 1960s, with détente being an end to it and the beginning of something different. Some scholars like to use Cold War I and Cold War II to distinguish between the early Cold War and the later one (the late 1970s through 1980s). After the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union, it became common to refer to the entire 1940s-1980s period as \"the Cold War,\" without much differentiation. All of which is to say, charting the data from just numbers about usage doesn't really give you a clear sense of _how_ the term what used and _what_ the people using it thought it _meant_. \n\nBut it does seem to indicate what I would anecdotally have guessed, which is that one sees a slow up-tick in usage in the postwar period that becomes pretty firm over the course of the 1950s.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/v0nm0j/theres_tons_of_american_media_about_a_world_where/ | v0nm0j | 43 | t3_v0nm0j | There's tons of American media about a world where the Soviet Union won the Cold War, but what media exists from Russia about a world where the United States won and what kind of world was expected? | 2,870 | 0.95 | null | false | 1,653,868,599 | [
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"body": "There's nothing like that from when the Soviet Union existed, although the reasons are interesting, and there's one movie that at least tilts in that direction.\n\nWhile there certainly was US media of this exact description, such as the\n1987 ABC miniseries _Amerika_ (\"America has been bloodlessly taken over by the Soviet Union, leading to slave-labor camps for some, collaboration for others and rebellion for yet others.\") this genre generally falls within the 80s, like the Jerry Ahern \"Survivalist\" book series\nwhich kicked off in 1981 or Ryder Stacy's 1984 book _Doomsday Warrior_\nwhere Russians win nuclear war in a first strike and now \"rule\nthe People's World Socialist Republics\", and Ted Rockson fights for freedom.\n\n>These Americans were a ragged bunch. Why should he feel afraid? The\nRussian forces were so overwhelming in comparison to the feeble resistance. It\nwas a joke. A pitiful joke on the Americans. Nonetheless, he felt his heart beat\nfaster and couldn't help but think of his wife and children back in\nVladivostok.\n\nThe timing is important here because for the action genre, Russian media pretty much did clones and often lagged in time. This dates all the way back to the 1920s, with the Red Pinkerton genre, a direct response to the popularity of American detective stories. And by direct, I mean there was an actual article-slash-manifesto, published by Nikolai Bukharin\nin 1922, who told writers to pen\n\n>...military adventures, our recent Revolutionary activities in the underground,\ncivil war episodes, the activity of the Cheka, of the Red Army and\nthe Red Guard, and use them as material for Revolutionary adventure novels.\n\nOne of the more interesting examples from this time period is the movie _Aelita: Queen Of Mars_ which crossed the detective story with science fiction (trivia: Shostakovich did the soundtrack and played the piano personally for screenings). The engineer Los dreams of going to Mars. We also see action on Mars, which has a society with aristocrats and slaves, and when slaves are not being needed they get put under ice for later. Through complex shenanigans (involving theft, murder, and being chased) Los manages to make it to Mars via rocketship and later helps lead a slave revolt. The chase-theft-murder pattern is from the outside detective genre, the slave revolt was the Soviet twist.\n\nThe general pattern developed: outside action media becomes popular, Soviets try to make their own version but -- due to heavy censorship and political pressure -- put their own spin on it. **ASIDE:** The thing most verboten was the suggestion that Communism is somehow flawed and would make people unhappy. The 1967 movie _Asya’s Happiness_ was banned until the late 80s, because it was filmed documentary-style in an actual village and includes actual suffering. There was slim-to-none chance pre-glasnost of a the-US-won-now-what style movie because of this, since the very premise suggests flaws in Communism.\n\nThe most well-developed of the action-clone-genres is the Ostern (the Russian Western) with settings during the Russian Revolution or Civil War. This setting was always popular although the Ostern itself didn't really kick off until the 1960s. To pick an example from 1981, _The Sixth_ ([clip here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdcC4e4OakA)) involves Roman Glodov, a post-Civil-War militia chief (think \"sheriff\") of a town where there are White guards hiding in the mountains who have done constant bandit raids, and killed the previous five chiefs. Glodov has to rally the town to fight the bandits.\n\nThe height of kung fu in the United States was in the early 1970s with movies like _The Way of the Dragon_ and _Five Fingers of Death_. Again late to the party, Russia released _Pirates of the 20th Century_ in 1980 ([trailer here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGLwVmel8ds)) where a group of pirates try to attack the boat _Nezhin_ but fortunately everyone on board knows martial arts. The movie is by a large margin the most popular Soviet movie of all time (to paraphrase an IMDB review, if you were a young Russian man, it wasn't if you'd seen the movie, but how many times) mainly because the population really were starved for action films and it came off as \"modern\" action.\n\nAs the 80s trucked on, in the US we got the what-if apocalypse shows I just referenced, but those were actually a sub-genre of the larger Patriotic Military Exploding Stuff genre (a technical term I just made up). Please note there is a clear difference between a _war movie_ and a Patriotic Exploding Stuff movie; the latter allows a scene like [the exploding arrow from _Rambo: First Blood Part II_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En7TZGuVY60).\n\nAs a direct response to Rambo came the movie _The Detached Mission_ (1985, [trailer here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLXZm-qlTns)) as directed by Mikhail Tumanishvili (a photo montage with the hero included Stallone). It is essentially the closest the Soviets came to a \"direct conflict film\", as a plot by military industrialists tries to start a war, and the Russians have to stop WWIII. But again, they have their own spin: the Russians are being helped by an American.\n\nAs the lead actor (Mikhail Nozhkin) explains in a later interview, despite the movie having a military theme and showing the Soviets in open battle with the West (as opposed to being a spy thriller), they were cautious not to offend \"friends\" with the movie. You see, while you had the combination of\n\n- the genre starting to exist and waiting to be copied\n\n- the rise of glasnost reducing the concern about censorship (but not removing it!)\n\n- a successful movie in the style of Rambo\n\nthe whole point of glasnost was to try to be more friendly with the West, so this was perhaps not the moment to depict the Soviets against them in open battle. And in fact, considering the height of this media in the US (the previously mentioned ABC miniseries _Amerika_) the Soviets tried to blackmail ABC while the miniseries was in production by denying press credentials, and the show was [openly criticized](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-02-15-op-3441-story.html) by Gorbachev, who said it just \"sows hatred towards the Soviet Union.\"\n\n...\n\nYou can watch the entirety of _Aelita: Queen of Mars_ [at this link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86KJCF4pkk).\n\nKenez, P. (1992). *Cinema and Soviet Society, 1917-1953*. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.\n\nLevitina, M. L. (2015). *'Russian Americans' in Soviet Film: Cinematic Dialogues Between the US and the USSR*. United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tmo1oz/over_the_last_month_the_perception_of_russias/ | tmo1oz | 90 | t3_tmo1oz | Over the last month, the perception of Russia's military as effective and modern has been shattered. During the Cold War, was the Soviet military actually well organized and a serious threat to the west, or was that perception fueled by propaganda? | 3,281 | 0.93 | null | false | 1,648,141,451 | [
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"body": "> During the Cold War, was the Soviet military actually well organized and a serious threat to the west,\n\nThe effectiveness of the Cold War Soviet armed forces is difficult to judge, due to a lack of evidence - the Soviet Cold War forces were involved in few wars. What wars did they fight in?\n\n1. Soviet intervention in the Hungarian Uprising (1956): The first round of fighting in Budapest, between the Soviet forces which were normally stationed in Hungary trying to prevent the collapse of communist rule and the revolutionaries, went badly for the Soviet forces. The Soviet forces expected, but did not receive, support from the Hungarian army. They didn't expect major resistance from the population. The fighting of 24th-28th October in Budapest demonstrated well-known difficulties of attacking in urban fighting, and the vulnerability of armoured vehicles in urban terrain. Soviet forces did much better in the second round of their intervention, from 4th November, when they attacked in much greater strength, having reinforced their original 5 divisions in Hungary to 17 divisions. The majority of the fighting was over by 9th November, with a few areas holding out until 11th November.\n\n2. Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968): While some other Warsaw Pact countries participated, the invasion was about 80% Soviet. The Czechoslovak government did not prepare for the invasion, and when it occurred, there was very little armed resistance - the government kept the army out of fighting, and urged the people to not resist. (There was much non-violent resistance by the population, which continued for some months.) The main notable military event related to the question of effectiveness was the capture of Prague Ruzyně International Airport by Soviet special forces in a surprise attack, arriving on a supposedly-civilian flight making a supposedly-emergency landing justified by claimed engine trouble. This takeover of the airport was followed by large-scale reinforcement by air.\n\n3. Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989): Famed as the Soviet Union's \"Vietnam\", this war demonstrated (unsurprisingly) that Soviet military forces were adept at winning straightforward set-piece battles when they had overwhelming numerical and material superiority. It also demonstrated the difficulties that conventional forces faced in guerilla warfare, and the political ineptness of the initial invasion and consequent war. The invasion was intended to quickly bring relative peace to Afghanistan, and the Soviet leadership did not expect a long-term guerilla war. The Afghan government had only been in power for a short time, having risen to power in the \"Saur Revolution\" of 1978, when the communist (and pro-Soviet) People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew Mohammed Daoud Khan's non-democratic one-party authoritarian government (which had itself overthrown the democratic constitution monarchy led by his cousin and king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, in 1973). The first leader of the PDPA government embarked on an ambitious modernisation and transformation plan for Afghanistan, including radical overhaul of the Islamic-based legal system, and aiming at thorough \"de-feudalisation\" of Afghanistan. As many in the Soviet Union predicted, this provoked widespread unrest and resistance, which grew rapidly, and the government lost control of most of the countryside. In early 1979, Taraki requested Soviet intervention to help restore order, which was refused. However, the Soviet Union did station forces along the border. Still in 1979, Hafizullah Amin, the 2nd-most powerful person in the PDPA government, overthrew Taraki in a coup. Perhaps contrary to Amin's expectations, the open revolt against the PDPA continued. Just as Taraki had done, Amin requested Soviet intervention. This time, the Soviets agreed, and Soviet forces entered Afghanistan. Unknown to Amin, their first step in restoring order was Amin's overthrow. Amin was overthrown in a military assault on his palace, and he was replaced by Babrak Karmal, who had been 3rd-most powerful in Taraki's government. However, Amin's overthrow failed to stop the rebellion, and the Soviet forces remained for many years, propping up a deeply unpopular government. Lasting a similar time to the USA's major commitment in Vietnam, the war resulted in proportionally similar casualties to the US forces in Vietnam (the Soviet casualties were about 1/4 of the US casualties, as their force was about 1/4 the size of the US forces in Vietnam).\n\nWhat can we learn from these? First, given time to prepare, the Soviet armed forces could successfully execute daring and well-planned missions (e.g., the capture of Ruzyně airport, the overthrow of Amin). Generally, organisation was good. The invasion of Czechoslovakia suffered some problems with shortages of food, water, and fuel; the invasion of Afghanistan proceeded more smoothly, despite much more difficult conditions (but also an invasion force only about 1/3 the size of the initial invasion force committed to Czechoslovakia).\n\nHowever, there were also problems. Operational flexibility at lower command levels was poor - \"mission command\" (or \"Auftragstaktik\" as the US army would say in its Germanophilic moments) was far from the minds of Soviet leadership. Essentially, Auftragstaktik consists of \"These are your goals; achieve them\", as opposed to Befehlstaktik, \"These are your orders; carry them out\". Mission command places higher demands on the training of lower-level officers, NCOs, and enlisted men, and requires higher command to trust the lower levels of the command structure. Order-command (Befehlstaktik) requires more detailed planned, and obedience from the lower levels. This was nothing new - order-command had been standard Soviet practice during the Great Patriotic War (i.e., WWII).\n\nThere were also serious problems with the training, motivation, and morale of Soviet conscripts. Considering that a major part of the military experience of junior conscripts was regular beatings by the senior conscripts, this should have been no surprise. This led to poor tactical performance by conscripts, and mistrust of conscripts by Soviet command. This, in turn, led to conscripts being lied to by their commanders as the nature and dangers of their mission. In Afghanistan, poor morale and training also led to widespread atrocities and war crimes. In both Hungary and Afghanistan, they led to widespread indiscriminate use of heavy firepower despite the presence of civilians.\n\nThe fall of the Soviet Union did not end any of these problems with the armed forces, and the post-Soviet economic convulsions left fewer resources for new equipment, maintenance, and training. The Russian-Chechen wars of 1994-1996 and 1999-2000 and the following insurgency showed that all of these problems still remained, and training and morale of conscripts had perhaps become even worse. By the time of the Russo-Georgian War of 2008, high-level organisation had improved, but training remained poor, and the army still suffered from poor funding. Improved organisation allowed effective use of air power, and rapid organisation of the invasion. However, intelligence and communications were poor. The take-home message for the Russians from the Russo-Georgian War was that reforms begun in response to the wars in Chechnya still had a long way to go. The 2014 invasion of Crimea was well-planned, quickly-organised, and included successful and daring use of special forces to take key places. However, invasions against minimal or no resistance are generally easy, and reveal few problems. The Russian intervention in Syria, from 2015 and still ongoing, has been successful, but mostly limited to air power. Generally, the Russian armed forces of a few years ago still had many of the strengths and weaknesses they had inherited from the Soviet armed forces.\n\nThe 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine once again shows the same strengths and problems.\n\n(continued next post)",
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"body": "# Who Won the War Which Never Was? Intro & Framing\n\nWell...this is a big question. And oh boy is that a lot of thread upvotes. Off the bat I should say that I will take a different tack from /u/wotan_weevil's answer, both in the big-picture sense - \"How do we judge the effectiveness of a military in a war which never happened?\" - and in certain supporting arguments. In particular, I will break my answer up chronologically because we are not talking about the same Soviet military in 1956 as we are in 1985. As their answer went up first, I will structure parts of my answer in a bit of a dialogue with theirs. For the rest, I will take you all on a stroll through the Cold War Soviet Army. With no further ado - **В путь!**\n\nIn some ways this question is not answerable, because that war was never fought and we can only suppose how the Soviet military might have performed. So what evidence do we have from which to suppose? Wotan has already run through several of the major military operations involving Soviet forces. However, none of these are the real deal when it comes to a serious confrontation with NATO. They are snapshots of some aspects of military performance. Critically, these are snapshots of a *particular moment in time* for the Soviet Armed Forces - the Soviet military of the Khruschev years is after all a totally different force from that of the Ogarkov years - and we know that the Soviets integrated the lessons of these snapshots into future planning. Therefore we will have to combine these snapshots with other analyses. Fortunately, the Cold War produced a great mass of military analysis and forecasting both from NATO and from the Soviets themselves.^(1)\n\nIt is this analysis which I will rest the majority of my argument on, integrated with information on the actual performance shown by Soviet forces in the aforementioned limited wars. This analysis will cover the **correlation of forces** (what is the qualitative and quantitative balance of troops and equipment); **doctrine** (how they planned to fight); and **how well the actual force could meet doctrine** (morale, training quality, industrial base). I will address Western and Soviet analyses & sources in this answer, with an obvious deference given to Soviet sources; however Western sources will be used extensively to mitigate accessibility barriers, and where these Western sources are flatly incorrect I will do my best to show exactly where the issues lie via translated Soviet sources. I believe this approach will answer for us both halves of your question: **how** **prepared & competent was the Soviet military**, and to what extent **were Western assessments driven by propaganda?** A rough timeline of the military balance during the Cold War will be helpful. We can periodize this as:\n\n* 1945-1953 - Stalin's death to the start of the Khruschev era, the beginning of the Cold War\n* 1953-1960 or maybe 1962 - Most of Khruschev's reign but moreover the start of the nuclear \"revolution in military affairs\";\n* 1962-1968 - A period of very significant doctrinal & technological change for the Soviet Armed Forces as the revolution in military affairs was fully realized;\n* 1968-1979 - The Vietnam War and subsequent malaise in the US, coupled with internal Warsaw Pact disputes and realignments, and also includes whatever definition of the detente period you'd like;\n* 1979-1991 - The \"modern media\" Cold War. The end of detente, coupled with military factors which made a \"Cold War gone hot\" in Europe seem more likely to contemporary observers than arguably any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Also the period of a second “revolution in military affairs”, this time driven by technical advances in microelectronics.\n\n# The Early Cold War: De-(and re-)mobilization, The Nuclear Revolution, and the Primacy of the Offensive\n\nI will not devote much time to the period of 1945-1953. The prospects for conflict in this period were generally low, both parties were in the process of post-WW2 demobilization, force reorganization, and for the Soviets also territorial consolidation and massive rebuilding. And of course, for the first part of this period, the US had a monopoly nuclear weapons.^(2) It was clear that the lines of a new confrontation were being drawn , but aside from flashpoints like the Berlin Airlift the odds of a major war between the Soviets and the Americans at this time were low.^(3)\n\nThe second period, 1953-1960 or so, is more interesting to us. As I said in the opening to this answer, this period can be considered the start of the “nuclear revolution in military affairs”. For both the Americans and the Soviets, postwar budgetary pressures strongly incentivized cuts to conventional forces. Nuclear forces were seen as more economical, as large nuclear forces were destructive enough to deter any aggression.^(4) As Soviet Premier Khruschev stated plainly to the Supreme Soviet in a 1960 address,\n\n>Our state has a powerful rocket technology. Given the present development of military technology, military aviation and the navy have lost their former importance. This type of armament is not being reduced but replaced. Military aviation is now being almost entirely replaced by missiles. We have now sharply reduced and probably will further reduce and even halt production of bombers and other obsolete equipment. In the navy, the submarine fleet is assuming greater importance and surface ships can no longer play the role they played in the past.”^(5)\n\nThe apparently grim realities of the conventional military balance for NATO in this period, coupled with the American head start on nuclear weapons development, contributed greatly to this preference on the American side. At the time it was believed that there was as much as a 10:1 Soviet numerical advantage in Central Europe; later revelations revised this down significantly, particularly in light of the Khruschev troop cuts - a reduction of about 2.6 million troops from 1950 - 1960.^(6) We now know from Soviet sources that, following the force reduction talks at the 1955 Geneva Summit, the Soviets did withdraw 75,000 troops from the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (GSVG), though there was some offsetting by rearmament in the East German Nationale Volksarmee. GSVG also received high priority for new equipment, such as T-10 heavy tanks in this period.^(7) I am still trying to piece together the state of morale and training in GSVG at this time, however. I have not found any memoirs or Soviet analyses which give a good indication of this. We know that at the immediate end of the war, looting and crime were rampant and there were significant issues with keeping soldiers controlled; however, demobilization remedied much of that. We know from memoirs also that for much of the Cold War, Soviet soldiers garrisoned in the USSR had all kinds of odd secondary duties such as agriculture and construction; I am curious if they were used in this manner in the occupation days, but I have no evidence either way.\n\nNone of this is to suggest that the conventional force withered on the vine. This was the era of the so-called “Zhukov reforms”, though Rodian Malinovksy and Pavel Rotmistrov probably deserve their own credit. These reforms can be seen as the Soviets doubling down on what they did best in the Second World War: Rapid, large-scale maneuver by armored and mechanized forces, albeit with new adaptations made for the nuclear battlefield. (This theme will continue in later sections.) A common description of the Red Army in the Second World War is that it was intellectually a mechanized maneuver army hamstrung by an industrial inability to mechanize. In the period of the “Zhukov reforms” this was plainly no longer the case. Soviet industry produced a colossal number of armored vehicles and trucks to support this force restructuring - for instance between the BTR-152 & BTR-40 armored troop carriers somewhere on the far side of 10,000 were built in this time period. This was along with about 16,000 T-54 medium tanks and...some difficult to determine number of T-10 heavy tanks. Maybe fewer than 2,000, maybe more than 8,000. Trucks to supply this force - somewhere in the realm of 400,000 medium and heavy cargo trucks. I’m not going to list the entire balance, but you get the idea. It was clear to Western analysts at the time (and has since been borne out as fact by Soviet documents) that whatever demobilization Soviet society as a whole had undergone, the Soviet military was getting ready for a modern war. The lessons of the Great Patriotic War were digested in minute detail, most particularly the span-of-control problems which had limited the agility of their mobile units. The Soviet command echelons in this period were filled with combat-tested generals, as well.\n\n**I'm going to break here for character limit reasons. The next portion of this answer should go up tonight.**",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/z7wnbn/why_was_berlin_divided_during_the_cold_war/ | z7wnbn | 9 | t3_z7wnbn | Why was Berlin divided during the cold war? | I know that there was East and West germany, but why complicate and divide Berlin into 2? It makes no sense to me, and my history teacher also has no idea. | 4 | 0.75 | null | false | 1,669,734,628 | [
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"body": "As the former capital of the defeated Reich, Berlin had important symbolic significance beyond its geographical location. Also of importance is the eventual solidification of Germany's division was never inevitable, nor was it predetermined. It came about as a result of incremental steps, misperceptions, and misunderstandings. In short, nobody set out to have a permanent 'Western' outpost in the middle of communist governed territory, it just turned out like that.\n\nOf crucial importance here is that during WW2, the allies comprehensively failed to come up with concrete policies for what the occupation of post-war Germany would actually look like and how it would operate. At the 1945 Postdam conference, agreement was reached on the division of Germany into three zones (hastily expanded to four when French representations got a little bit heated about their exclusion). The post-war goals were demilitarisation, de-Nazification, de-centralisation, and democratisation, but the overarching reason for division was that it made things easier to administer. A joint administration covering the entire nation would be almost insurmountably unwieldy. Hence, the four zones where each nation would administer their own smaller section.\n\nIt was because of the symbolism I mentioned above that Berlin was divided along similar lines. In the immediate post-war years, both the Western allies and the USSR's leadership believed that division was temporary and that Germany would shortly be brought back together. These ambitions are put into question by the emerging Cold War. It's very much the case that the 'German question' is *influenced by* the Cold War and also *influences* its emergence in a form of feedback loop.\n\nThe destruction of war and the dismantling of remaining industrial resources by the occupying powers in their zones (in particular - but solely - by the USSR) caused massive economic dislocation in Germany and led to what was in large part an economic decision by the UK and USA to fuse their zones into the 'bizone' (which eventually brought in the French zone as well) with the aim of bringing a new, stabilising currency (what would become the Deutschmark). This led to a reaction from Moscow, where Stalin saw the chances of a unified, communised Germany slipping away. We then get the Berlin blockade of 1948-49, the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and in response the creation of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). \n\nWhy do the Western allies stay in a divided Berlin, though? Because it was symbolic of their determination not to retreat, to stay strong in the face of alleged 'communist aggression', and to retain 'credibility'. Throughout the Cold War Berlin is a symbol, and most leaders realise this. But symbols matter and in the rarified atmosphere of the Cold War, credibility matters and perception is often more important than reality.\n\nOf course, the foregoing is a very, very brief encapsulation of the situation surrounding Germany's division and the status of Berlin. There's so much more detail and nuance that it would literally take a book to cover. However, if you have further questions I'll happily try to answer them.\n\nMalcolm\n\n**Sources**\n\nCostigliola, Frank, ‘After Roosevelt's Death: Dangerous Emotions, Divisive Discourses, and the Abandoned Alliance’,*Diplomatic History*, 34:1 (Jan 2010), 1-23\n\nHarrison, Hope M., ‘Driving the Soviets up the Wall: A Super-Ally, a Superpower, and the Building of the Berlin Wall, 1958-61’, *Cold War History*, 1:1 (2000), 53-74\n\nLeffler, Melvyn P. and David S. Painter (eds), *Origins of the Cold War: An International History*, 2nd ed (New York/London: Routledge, 2005)\n\nReynolds, David, *From World War to Cold War: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the International History of the 1940s* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)\n\nStivers, William, ‘The Incomplete Blockade: Soviet Zone Supply of West Berlin, 1948–49’, *Diplomatic History* 21:4 (1997), 569–602.\n\nTrachtenberg, Mark, *A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement 1945–1963* (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999)",
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"body": "Occupation of the enemy capital is the prime symbol of victory. The western allies wanted to avoid the implication that the victory over Germany was solely the product of the USSR. \n\nTherefore, it was necessary to divide Germany and Berlin into four sectors. The intention was to ultimately reach an agreement on reunifying all into one German nation, which took another 45 years to realize.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/104jah7/where_are_all_the_bunkers_from_the_cold_war/ | 104jah7 | 3 | t3_104jah7 | Where are all the bunkers from the Cold War? | Since the Cuban Missile Crisis, the threat of total nuclear destruction seemed an entirely real threat, yet despite how real of a possibility it is, there doesn't seem to be any nuclear bunkers around today. Yeah there's Cheyenne Mountain Complex and all the missile silos, but how come there doesn't seem to be any for the general population? Were they all demolished after the Cold War? | 1 | 0.56 | null | false | 1,672,975,352 | [
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"body": "Most nuclear survival accommodations for civilians in the US for the Cold War were not dedicated \"bunkers\" like Cheyenne Mountain. They were spaces that were certified as satisfying certain architectural criteria that would allow them to serve as blast and/or fallout shelters, and were, for a time in the 1960s, equipped with emergency supplies. Many of the spaces identified by the shelter program in the 1960s well-predated the nuclear age: they were, for example, basements and subbasements of commercial buildings and schools and apartment complexes and government buildings and so on.\n\nOne might ask: why was this the extent of the program? Why _didn't_ they build a larger, dedicated shelter system? The answer was: money and lack of political will. In the US, there was never quite enough enthusiasm for shelters to hugely invest in an infrastructure program. As a result, most of the effort when into trying to convince people to build their own shelters, with their own investment, or to identify pre-existing spaces that might be adaptable to this purpose.\n\nThose physical spaces did not disappear, and many are still labeled with the familiar [fallout shelter signs](https://wgbh.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/80b947f/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1704x1274+0+0/resize/1704x1274!/quality/70/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn-news.wgbh.org%2Fs3fs-public%2Fpicture.jpg) from the 1960s. (Where I live, in the NYC environs, you see them all over the place.) But over the course of the later Cold War, nearly all ceased to be maintained as emergency spaces. They have reverted to just being used as basements and storage areas, and lack emergency supplies. They may not even pass the certification requirements, anymore, were they to be introduced again. \n\nThis is a leitmotif for Civil Defense in the USA in general: lots of enthusiasm for a few decades, stagnation and then decline of interest, and an absorption in other kinds of planning or spaces. My favorite example of this is the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA), whose underground, bunker-like headquarters were finished during the heyday of Civil Defense interest and were meant to help state officials survive thermonuclear war so they could coordinate the recovery efforts. But over the years, as Civil Defense became absorbed into \"All Hazard\" emergency management, the bunker became used for anything _but_ nuclear war preparation — e.g., dealing with extreme weather, or even coordinating the response to the Boston marathon bombing. When I visited it in 2018 or so as part of a tour of experts, the director somewhat sheepishly told us that they didn't even have plans on the books for dealing with nuclear weapon detonations anymore — which felt rather ironic given that we were all sitting underground in a nuclear blast and fallout shelter. \n\nAnyway. These spaces were not deliberately demolished, but they were repurposed and forgotten. This did not happen right when the Cold War ended, but rather was a gradual process of decline of interest in Civil Defense that followed the beginning of détente in the late 1960s. For more on the history of these shelters, see esp. Kenneth Rose, _One Nation Underground_.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/z50a7m/why_did_the_cold_war_not_end_with_the_vietnam_war/ | z50a7m | 5 | t3_z50a7m | Why did the Cold War not end with the Vietnam war? | By the end of the Vietnam war, the American public viewed militarism and foreign interventions so negatively that some people were spitting on soldiers coming home from deployments. With this in mind, why did the Cold War continue on for another ~15 years after the end of the Vietnam war? If Americans at the time didn't want to so much as fight a war in Vietnam, why were they so willing to prepare for fighting the Warsaw pact in Europe? I know American militarism saw a resurgence under Reagan with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and various proxy wars throughout Latin America and Africa. But why exactly did Americans keep supporting the Cold War even after Vietnam? | 7 | 0.62 | null | false | 1,669,444,119 | [
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"body": "This is a very complex question that's actually asking about many different, overlapping issues. Firstly, I'd start by suggesting that the question itself presupposes a form of US primacy in the Cold War that in itself is a form of exceptionalism. What we refer to as 'the Cold War' was always multipolar and not simply bipolar (in the sense of being about the USA-USSR confrontation). From the 40s to the mid-1950s, the British empire is certainly a third pole. Likewise the People's Republic of China after the Sino-Soviet Split that eventuated from the mid 1950s onwards. I'd also challenge the term 'proxy wars'. That's something that historians try not to use any more, as saying something is a 'proxy' war elides the local agency and perhaps obscures the local and regional contingencies of conflicts such as Korea, Vietnam, Angola, etc.\n\nSecondly, it's also important to point out that - as Daniel Sargent persuasively points out in his book *A Superpower Transformed* (and he's far from the only scholar to make this case) - in the mid-1970s there was a significant number of observers who thought that the Cold War was over. Indeed, Jimmy Carter was referred to on multiple occasions as America's 'first post-Cold War president'. For another perspective, the historian Anders Stephanson contends that the Cold War was on one hand a distinctively American project and that the Cold War was effectively over in 1963 when US hegemony and Soviet decline was effectively assured (I don't agree with Stephanson, but his argument is certainly worth engaging with).\n\nThirdly, there's the vital point that we sometimes overstate opposition to US intervention abroad within a domestic context. Right up to the Vietnam War's denoument there remained a huge proportion of the US electorate who supported the conflict and the US global stance more generally. Connected to this, we can look back and go \"Nixon was obviously a crook!\" but that again obscures the fact that he was hugely popular and won the 1972 election by a gigantic margin (for various complex reasons it's not possible to go into here). When we talk about 'Americans', who are we talking about? Because we're discussing a complex polity made up of millions upon millions of people, so it's simply not possible to say \"Americans thought this...\" in anything but the most general (and useless) terms.\n\nThat's all kind of prefatory to the rest of this answer. When the US withdrew from Vietnam in 1973, the 'Cold War' geopolitical space was dominated by the idea of detente - the thaw in relations between the US and USSR, the US and PRC, and Western and Eastern Europe. 'European detente' is sometimes the forgotten factor here. As Jussi Hanihmaki notes, the twin crises of Berlin and Cuba reminded Europeans just how vulnerable they were to the excesses of the Cold War. The thawing of European tensions emerged out of a challenge to the dangers posed by Cold War bipolarity.\n\nDetente did manage to reduce tensions and lead to genuine diplomatic achievements. But then it collapsed and the Cold War was 'on' again. Why? Detente had in large part been driven by US aims and ambitions, and it was American domestic opposition that contributed in large part to its collapse. Despite achievements such as the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), detente was often more perception than reality, and was challenged by superpower actions **and** internal opponents.\n\nDuring the Nixon years and from 1974 when Gerald Ford took office in the aftermath of Watergate, many Democratic congressmen charged the Republican administration with leaving the USA in a militarily weaker position. The 1975 Helsinki Accords were also criticized. Opponents argued that they accepted the ongoing Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. Moreover, Nixon and Ford’s unwillingness to criticise the USSR’s human rights record – recalling that human rights were a cornerstone of Helsinki – came under fire. International figures such as the famed Soviet writer and dissident Alexandr Solzhenitsyn attacked Helsinki as a “betrayal of Eastern Europe.”\n\nThe perception gap between what détente meant in theory and what actually eventuated was apparent in the Middle East and Africa. For example, when the US involved itself in the Middle East, this implied to the USSR that détente did not mean a reduction in efforts to support developing world or non-aligned nations.\n\nSo why did détente ultimately collapse? Olav Njolstad usefully and succinctly identifies five key factors:\n\n1: Underpinning détente was a basic lack of mutual trust.\n\n2: There was a lack of shared values and visions. Nuclear restraint aside, the two sides held vastly differing political ideals and nurtured different hopes for the future of world affairs.\n\n3: Thirdly, there was no real economic interdependence between the USSR and the West. The sluggish, weak, outdated Soviet economy had little to offer capitalism.\n\n4: There was also a mutual lack of restraint that stemmed from the zero-sum game of Cold War geopolitics. Both superpowers still sought geopolitical advantage at the expense of the other.\n\n5: Finally, there was the arms race. On both sides there were multiple forces putting pressure on moves to restrain the arms race, for and against. And such was the extent, diversity, and complexity of the nuclear complex, it was impossible to judge the situation objectively. \n\nIn the end, the reason for the Cold War's continuation is historically explicable and to centre the United States overmuch obscures a lot of important things. Anyway, this is kind of a brief answer, so if you have any follow-up questions I'll try to clarify points.\n\nMalcolm\n\n**Sources**\n\nHanhimaki, Jussi, 'Detente in Europe, 1962-1975', in Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, *The Cambridge History of the Cold War,* Vol.3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)\n\nNjolstad, Olav, 'The Collapse of Superpower Detente, 1975-1980' in Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, *The Cambridge History of the Cold War,* Vol.3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)\n\nSargent, Daniel, *A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)\n\nStephanson, Anders, 'Cold War Degree Zero', in Joel Isaac and Duncan Bell (eds.) *Uncertain Empire: American History and the Idea of the Cold War* (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012)",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xbsecw/ive_heard_that_during_the_height_of_the_cold_war/ | xbsecw | 11 | t3_xbsecw | I've heard that during the height of the Cold War, there were beliefs/strong rumors that the Soviets had a hydrogen bomb in the attic of their embassy in Washington. What's the current consensus of historians on this? | I found [this old article](https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1001206,00.html) discussing the idea. Apparently back during the 1960s, there was a strong belief among some in US leadership that the Soviets had a hydrogen bomb in their embassy attic. The premise was that they had smuggled it in one component at a time inside protected diplomatic bags. In the event of a nuclear conflict, the bomb could be detonated with zero warning. Before anyone could detect Soviet missiles being launched, the entire DC metro area would already be gone.
That's the premise at least. But have any historians actually done work on this? Is this just a fanciful rumor, or is there good evidence that this actually happened? | 126 | 0.95 | null | false | 1,662,927,144 | [
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"body": "In 1946, only a year after he had become death, destroyer\nof worlds, Oppenheimer was asked in a closed Senate session\nabout if it was possible a handful of people could smuggle\nan atomic bomb into New York City and blow it up.\n\nOppenheimer replied \"of course\", which was followed by\n\n>What instrument would you use to detect an atomic bomb\nhidden somewhere in a city?\n\nto which Oppenhimer responded with a \"screwdriver\", in order\nto open every crate entering the city.\n\nIn other words, there was anxiety about portable nuclear weapons\nfrom the very start of the Cold War. Oppenheimer's comments were\nquoted in the 1951 novel _The Smuggled Atomic Bomb_ which is roughly about the\nscenario mentioned in the question: physics student Duff Bogan discovers\na plot to smuggle pieces of nuclear bombs into\nthe United States piecemeal and assemble them while stateside.\n\nThe actual term tends to be \"nuclear suitcase\", referring to the idea\nof having a fully assembled portable bomb. They've been discussed\nmore at length [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/866zac/were_missingstolen_suitcase_nukes_really_a_thing/)\nand [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/26225i/briefcase_nukes/) by\n/u/Kochevnik81 and /u/restricteddata; despite persistent rumors, there didn't seem\nto be any from the Soviets that surfaced. A former Russian Security Council Secretary, Alexander Lebed, talked in the late 90s about a set of nuclear suitcase bombs, but none of the potential sites he mentioned in the US yielded anything.\n\nHowever, we're discussing a slightly different scenario, more like the 1951 novel's idea. As the Hugh Sidey report is the only real source for this, it's worth quoting a little. Note Sidey did follow JFK closely and wrote one of the first biographies -- [here's also a good oral history interview conducted by Sidey](https://www.jfklibrary.org/sites/default/files/archives/JFKOH/Sidey%2C%20Hugh%20S/JFKOH-HSS-01/JFKOH-HSS-01-TR.pdf) -- so it is unlikely he made the story up, but please note just because JFK said a rumor doesn't make it true. In the Cold War, conspiracy theories were like the air.\n\n>In late July 1961, President Kennedy, just back from the grim Vienna summit with Khrushchev, asked me to dinner in Palm Beach. After daiquiris and Frank Sinatra records on the patio, his three guests and I gathered around the table for fish-in-a-bag, a White House recipe. Between lusty bites, Kennedy told the story of Khrushchev's anger over West Berlin, the island of freedom in the Soviet empire's East Germany. \"We have a bustling communist enclave just four blocks from the White House,\" I noted, meaning the Soviet embassy. Kennedy paused, fork between plate and mouth, and said, \"You know, they have an atom bomb on the third floor of the embassy.\" Aware of JFK's love of spy stories, I said something like, \"Sure, why not?\"\n\nOther than the one-shot nature of the story (which doesn't make it into the aforementioned biography) there are plenty of reasons to be doubtful. Embassies are absolutely hot when it comes to spying, and while the USSR was the undisputed champion of bugs, the US certainly made plenty of attempts, and it would be highly risky to assume any such discussion of nuclear weapon assembly would go unrecorded.\n\nFurthermore, the Ms George Pullman Mansion (the building being referred to by JFK) dates to 1910 and was not really built with a nuclear lab in mind; [here's a picture of the inside](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/55ef0304e4b03f4c029572a4/1443126588002-F9GTTZMJP1UUVUMQHXCP/image-asset.jpeg?content-type=image%2Fjpeg). The only major alterations were in 1933, with an enlargement by the architect Eugene Schoen, and an expanded wing done in 1977.\n\nWhile these issues can _technically_ be overcome, we essentially have a situation with no evidence to begin with, and offhand rumors about Soviet activities were so common there's no reason to suspect this one has special status.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yra0tq/why_are_current_nuclear_warheads_weaker_than_the/ | yra0tq | 2 | t3_yra0tq | Why are current nuclear warheads weaker than the ones that were produced in the cold war? |
During the cold war both US and the USSR developed nuclear warheads with a yield that reached megatons but now almost every nuke in their arsenal have a yield of a few kilotons with the most powerful of them reaching a few hundreds of kilotons. Is there any particular reason why they renounced using those powerful weapons in exchange of the weaker ones? | 39 | 0.9 | null | false | 1,668,072,146 | [
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"body": "\"Weaker\" is not the right word for this; what you mean is \"lower yield,\" which is a technical term that lacks a pejorative implication. Because as you can guess, neither the US nor USSR/Russia would adopt any technology they thought was \"weaker\"! \n\nThe basic answer is that nuclear warheads can be engineered to maximize different properties. You could, if you wanted to, optimize them for maximum yield. That certainly has a scare factor to it, and can do a lot of damage. But high yield weapons were also high-weight and high-volume weapons. They were hard to \"deliver\": to get them to their targets reliably and successfully. The famous Tsar Bomba is a classic example of that: a nuclear weapon of enormous explosive power (100 megatons at its full strength), but so large that it [had to be slung underneath a heavy bomber like an egg](https://static.thisdayinaviation.com/wp-content/uploads/tdia/2015/10/TU95-tsar-01.jpg). Such a weapon will be relatively slow to get to its target, and will be vulnerable to being shot down the entire time, but it is putting a lot of your stockpile \"eggs\" into one \"basket.\" It's an expensive weapon that isn't really going to have a great chance of actually playing a part in the war. \n\nLet's imagine, for example, that you had a target that you _really_ wanted to drop a Tsar Bomba on. How important for you is that outcome? Let's say you want 90% certainty that a Tsar Bomba would go off on it. But let's imagine you think that every bomber with a Tsar Bomba attached to it has only a 50% chance of actually succeeding in their operation (which is a pretty optimistic random number I chose — remember that the US, NATO, etc., has invested in anti-bomber jets, anti-bomber radar systems, anti-bomber nuclear-tipped surface-to-air missiles, etc., along with the possibility of mechanical error with the plane or the bomb itself). Without getting into the math, to get a 90% certainty with something that has a 50% chance of succeeding requires sending at least 4 bombers against the target. If your chance of success drops to 25%, you need to send 9. If you drop your desire for certainty to something like 50%, and have a 50% chance of each one making it, you could get away with one... but if you don't care about it that much, why are you wasting a bomber on this? These are just example numbers, but you can see that this is a pretty inefficient way to do things.\n\nSeparate from this is another problem. The damage done by nuclear weapons does not have a _linear_ relationship with their yield. That is, if bomb A has an output of 100 kilotons, and bomb B has an output of 1,000 kilotons, bomb B is not 10X more _damaging_ than bomb A. The distance of the blast and thermal effects of an explosion scales as a cubic root. So a given blast effect from bomb B is only going to go a more than 2X as far as the same effect as bomb A. That doesn't mean that bigger bombs aren't indeed more destructive — but that you see something closer to a _doubling_ of range of effects as you increase the _order of magnitude_ of the bombs. (You can experiment with [NUKEMAP](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/) to see what this means intuitively.) \n\nBut weapons of comparable design sophistication do have their weight scale linearly as a function of their yield. So that 1,000 kt bomb will weight 10X more than your 100 kiloton one. So as you increase the yield, you get diminishing returns in the form of damage, but increasing penalties for weight and volume. Hence the ridiculous unwieldiness of the Tsar Bomba. There are, to be sure, better and worse ways to design a nuclear weapon, and the Tsar Bomba is definitely heavier than it needed to be for that yield. But the general rule stands.\n\nSo what happened? In the early 1950s, the US and USSR both raced to make very high-yield bombs. This was driven both by their \"horror factor\" but also by the fact that their ability to deliver the weapons accuracy was pretty limited. You can compensate for poor accuracy by having a bigger nuke (it makes it hard to \"miss\"). By the early 1960s, though, they figured out a) how to make relatively compact weapons that were in the roughly 100-1000 kiloton yield range, and b) how to make more accurate delivery systems. They also realized, by the late 1960s-1970s, that the real \"name of the game\" for nukes was to have things like MIRVed missiles (long-range missiles that could each carry multiple warheads on them, up to a dozen or more per missile) that could overwhelm missile defense systems, or cruise missiles (that could evade systems). To do that well you want a premium on compactness of warhead, and the \"sweet spot\" for warheads of the right size and weight turns out to be around 100-500 kilotons. So they worked to make those systems super accurate as well, and more and more reliable, so that they could have an arsenal of a fixed size but would be guaranteed the ability to create an unacceptable level of destruction. \n\nThe higher accuracy meant that they could destroy any target they wanted to with a high reliability; even if you did want to destroy an entire metro area, it is easier to do that with 5 warheads loaded onto ICBMs or submarines than it is to do it with one big, slow, clunky, heavy warhead. And whereas your big, slow, clunky, heavy warhead really has only one imaginable use (destroying a metro area, or excavating an underground bunker complex), your smaller nukes could be reconfigured to different targeting scenarios as you saw fit (so you could use them to target other nuclear weapons silos, for example, without \"wasting\" them). \n\nAnyway, all of which is to say, the weapons that got developed in the late Cold War, and are still being used today, aren't \"weaker.\" They are actually far more deadly by several measures, even if they are less powerful. They are more reliable, they are more flexible, they are more accurate, they are more efficient, they are more _credible_ as weapons you could expect an enemy to think you might be able to successfully use, etc., than the old Cold War monster bombs that could barely (or not even barely) fit inside their bombers.\n\nFor further reading: Eric Schlosser's _Command and Control_ is a great general-audience history of nuclear weapons development over the Cold War that is very readable, focused around issues of safety and accidents, but generally applicable to this kind of question. Donald MacKenzie's _Inventing Accuracy_ is a great sociological history of nuclear weapons accuracy issues that gets into the technical and political dimensions of exactly the kind of late Cold War (1960s onward) shift I am talking about here. And I wrote an article [a year ago](https://thebulletin.org/2021/11/the-untold-story-of-the-worlds-biggest-nuclear-bomb/) about the development of the Tsar Bomba, and the response by the US (which included looking into developing its own weapons of comparable yield, but abandoning that search), which touches on many of these same issues.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xpr5g7/how_were_nonmarxist_form_of_socialism_viewed/ | xpr5g7 | 7 | t3_xpr5g7 | How were non-Marxist form of socialism viewed during the Cold War? Especially during McCarthyism? | Would you have been put on some black list in the US if you identified as an anarchist (in particular a market socialist anarchist like Pierre-Joseph Proudhon or Benjamin Tucker, an anarcho-egoist like Max Stirner, a collectivist anarchist like Bakunin, or an AnCom like Peter Kropotkin or Emma Goldman) or as a Owenite or Fourierist or as any form of non-Marxist socialism based on worker cooperatives rather than nationalization. Would you have been viewed as a danger to the country? | 11 | 0.83 | null | false | 1,664,309,138 | [
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"body": "You are right to mention different anarchisms because different periods of US history responded to different anarchisms differently!\n\nOwenism in the 1840s had an easier time than, say, Anarcho-Syndicalists in the 1910s, and the US has developed its own unique (and much more right-wing) forms of Egoism in the 20th century. It's also nice to see someone reference the anarchist influence on the Owens (Robert was, after all, a close friend of William Godwin).\n\nAnarcho-Communists and Anarcho-Syndicalists have almost always had a hard time in US history. The labour movement during the post-Civil War depression was led by anarchists like Albert and Lucy Parsons, the repression of which led to the Haymarket Affair of 1886. A labour protest in Chicago turned ugly when a bomb was thrown, killing a policeman. The police opened fire on the crowd, killing at least four people. Eight anarchists were arrested, tried, and executed for \"masterminding\" the \"riot\" despite many of them being able to prove they were not present at the scene (the bomber was never identified). The following months and years saw a brutal police crackdown and a significant press backlash against anarchism, and parts of the US labour movement sought to distance themselves. A collection of primary sources about the Haymarket Affair can be found [here](https://www.chicagohistoryresources.org/hadc/). \n\nIn 1901 Leon Czolgosz, a disciple of Emma Goldman, assassinated President William McKinley. McKinley's successor, Teddy Roosevelt, declared \"when compared with the suppression of anarchy, every other question sinks into insignificance.\" In the 1910s, several states criminalised Syndicalism, defining it as essentially terrorism (or, to look at it from another perspective, they defined the crime of terrorism but called it \"Syndicalism\"). \n\nIn 1927 Sacco and Vanzetti, Italian-American anarchists, were executed for robbery and murder on shaky evidence, despite a seven year campaign for a retrial or clemency. Their judge, Webster Thayer, was quoted as saying he would \"get them good and proper\" and referred to the defendants as \"anarchistic bastards\". \n\nSo as you can see, there is a long history of persecution against anarchists in US culture. Formal blacklists (such as in the McCarthy era) don't tend to look too closely into the exact philosophical positions of the people they indict - many of the Hollywood stars named by/for HUAC were liberals who had merely been against Nazism before the US right thought it seemly.\n\nThe most up-to-date history of anarchism (and its reception) is Ruth Kinna's *The Government of No One,* which covers most of this. I think the US right has long treated opposition to capital as synonymous with opposition to society, and thus left-anarchisms have usually been regarded as a threat.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xe54mb/what_were_people_researching_at_the_north_pole/ | xe54mb | 6 | t3_xe54mb | What were people researching at the North pole during the cold war? | I've read few articles about US and Soviet Union competing about North Pole. North Pole race like the space race. Soviet Union had a base established 1961 called Novolazarevskaya. The most famous thing that happened there is when Leonid Rogozov doctor had to perform a self surgery to remove his appendix. But I'm just curious what were scientists doing there in the first place? Why was the race to the north pole so important? | 6 | 0.76 | null | false | 1,663,169,901 | [
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"body": "There were (and are) lots of \"strategic\" reasons to want to lay claim to, and have knowledge of, the North Pole. \n\nOne is basic geopolitics. When one looks at a map of the global Cold War, one often sees something [like this](https://layers-of-learning.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/cold-war-map.png) — basically a horizontal projection of some sort. But strategic maps from the time looked more often [like this](http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/US-nuclear-bomber-deployments-1945-1958.jpg) — a top-down, polar view. Because that is how a full-scale conflict would be fought between the USA and USSR, \"over the pole,\" which is much more direct than \"over the oceans.\" Now, in practice, these things could be more complicated, both because not all conflict was on this intercontinental level (e.g., a lot of Cold War maps are just about Europe or Asia), and there are other ways to structure your attacks (e.g., submarines can be anywhere, and even bombers can come from other bases or use refueling to take longer routes). \n\nBut you can see the pole is a pretty important area just strategically, because it's the \"no man's land\" in between these nations. So both US and Soviet ballistic missile submarines, for example, were adapted to break through polar ice to fire their missiles, which in turn means that the hunter-killer submarines trying to find them would need to know where they might be hiding up there, which in turns means that the missile subs would need to know where and how to hide, _which in turn_ (phew) means that you'd want to have a really good understanding of what those spaces were like, physically. Modern submarine warfare requires not only have a good map of the bottom of the ocean, but when you are under ice, you want to know about how much ice and so on is above you, and you also need to know how different temperatures of water are circulating (because those are super important to using, and evading, sonar). So that is automatically going to translate into a lot of technical interest in the polar setup (as it did to ocean research in general in the Cold War). So in 1947, the US military began researching ice thickness in the North Pole, and by the end of the decade they were also researching sea ice, permafrost, properties of snow, etc. — all things you'd want to know about an inhospitable battlefield. And that's not getting into some of the weird research, like whether whales or dolphins could be used as part of submarine warfare under the poles, which the US did. \n\nAs Michael Dennis puts it so well: \n\n> The cold-war American state saw the Arctic a s a potential battle space; consequently, there was a massive investment by the armed services in understanding and mapping the region, whether undersea, on the ice and land, or in the air and space above the pole. To the extent that the polar regions mattered in the cold-war public imagination, they existed as potential sites of conflict, in addition to being exotic and nearly unimaginable sites of adventure. The polar perspective figured most prominently in the symbol of the United Nations, a view of the globe from high atop the North Pole.\n\nYet another reason is the sort of prestige-race that was being played out in the Cold War as well. Space, the oceans, the poles — these were all seen as places where \"firsts\" mattered, in that they showed allied and domestic audiences which side was worth \"betting\" on. So just as satellites were part of the International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958, so was polar research — it was meant to be a new \"frontier\" that would inspire the world about new scientific and exploratory progress, unite distant groups of researchers in many countries, and overall create an atmosphere of \"global science\" that (it was hoped) would foster new ties, connections, good-will, and so on.\n\nAnd yet another, mundane reason is that the North Pole contains many important strategic resources, like oil. That is one of the reasons it is still a hotly-contested area today. \n\nThere is much more that could be said, but you can see, I hope, that the North Pole in particular played sort of a triple role in the interests of the US and the Soviet Union. And by the late Cold War, it added a new importance: it, along with Antarctica, became key sites for studying the changing climate. \n\nThere is quite a large literature now in the history of Cold War science on polar research, both in the 19th century and in the present. One nice collection of essays on both, and the intersections between the two (which is where I got Dennis' quote), is Roger Launius, James Fleming, and David Devorkin, eds., _Globalizing Polar Science: Reconsidering the International Polar and Geophysical Years_ (Palgrave, 2010). For an article-length discussion of the Cold War as a potential battleground, and how that drove scientific priorities in the Cold War, see Ronald Doel, \"Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences: The Military's Influence on the Environmental Sciences in the USA after 1945,\" _Social Studies of Science_ 33, no. 5 (2003): 635–666, which is where some of the details of the research come from.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yj8397/would_this_be_an_accurate_albeit_basic/ | yj8397 | 3 | t3_yj8397 | Would this be an accurate, albeit basic, description of international relations at end of WW2/start of Cold War? | Following on from my previous ask, I'm creating a work of fiction which I want to make as accurate and faithful as possible. I've been doing research and I think I'm largely correct but if I could get any confirmation or pointers I would be very grateful.
So the UK, US and USSR had just defeated Nazi Germany. Victory! God knows how many millions had been spent by each faction and they all had a people to feed and nation to rebuild. Staying on good terms with each other wasn't a good way to fill the power vacuum, and another all out war just wasn't going to happen. But still no one wanted to do nothing. So as the fight between fascism and democracy became a fight between capitalism and communism, the use of bombs and firearms became the use of spies and information. Now that Germany wasn't the enemy, the West and the Soviets were going at each other to stake the now empty claim.
Obviously there was stuff going on all around the world and there was so much more nuance. All in all, would this be an accurate description of the times? Minor details aside, is this faithful to history? Anything else I should know? Because I think this is enough for what I need but I'm not a historian myself and I can't be certain I've been looking up everything I should be.
Thank you so much in advance. | 0 | 0.4 | null | false | 1,667,307,619 | [
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"body": "It's probably an okay description for most purposes! As a fellow writer, research can be both fun and inspiring but ultimately fiction will never be 100% accurate, and you don't want to get too tripped up trying to get everything right.\n\nWith that said, I do think your description is missing that the US/UK and the USSR were at each other's throats before WW2 as well. Stalin tried to side with Germany first, and the USSR invaded Poland alongside the Nazis. The first Red Scare in the US was in 1917 when the Bolshevik Revolution happened. And before that, there's a long history of Cold War-esque scheming between the British and Russian Empires.\n\nI also don't know that I think it was all about the power vacuum - I really do think it was about the ideology for a lot of people on both sides. Stalin was, uh, bad, so I sympathize with the desire to work against that, but also for a lot of American conservatives, anti-communism was part and parcel with pushing back against progressive causes in the US. And I think that both nations sort of propped up their own national egos by setting each other up as this vast and terrifying existential threat, if that makes sense. \n\nIf you're writing something set in the early Cold War era, I've done research on this for my own project and can probably help some with recommending books you might want to read or possibly answering questions directly. I'm not a real historian tho, just a guy with a library card and a half-finished spy novel.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wwvc9e/why_didnt_interwar_yugoslavia_immediately_fall/ | wwvc9e | 5 | t3_wwvc9e | Why didn’t interwar Yugoslavia immediately fall apart like it did post-Cold War? | From what I understand, the ethnic tensions and lack of a desire to be unified that caused the balkanization of Yugoslavia existed during the interwar period, and the only reason it stayed together during the Cold War was Soviet support and a dictatorial government. Why didn’t Yugoslavia instead fall apart in the 20s or 30s? | 9 | 0.81 | null | false | 1,661,376,507 | [
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"body": "/u/commiespaceinvader and /u/zwirlo have previously answered [Pop history often presents Yugoslavia as a \"nationalist time bomb\" destined to blow, held together only by the force of strongman President Tito. But he died in 1980 and the first Yugoslav war began in 1991. What was really going on?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/lwbshe/pop_history_often_presents_yugoslavia_as_a/)\n\nEDIT: This is one version of your question, but someone else may have a more precise answer for you.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/w2klke/during_the_cold_war_both_the_us_and_russia/ | w2klke | 5 | t3_w2klke | During the Cold War both the US and Russia developed "tactile" nuclear weapons such as nuclear mines and nuclear artillery, but this class of weapons was completely omitted from the various nuclear control treaties. Why were they excluded? Was their existence publicly known or acknowledged? | The term is "tactical" not "tactile" weapons. My apologies. I'll have a stern discussion with autocorrect. | 60 | 0.87 | null | false | 1,658,208,057 | [
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"body": "Their existence was very public and very acknowledged during the Cold War, at least by the United States. The US did quite a few \"publicity\" blitzes relating to its tactical capabilities, the most famous of involved [five men standing directly underneath an exploding atomic bomb high above them](https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/07/16/156851175/five-men-agree-to-stand-directly-under-an-exploding-nuclear-bomb), as a way to illustrate that cities would not necessarily be harmed by tactical warfighting above them. Of course, the details of systems and their actual deployments were kept quite secret, but certainly by the period of the arms control treaties (detente and beyond) it was an \"open secret\" that the US had such weapons deployed globally and it was publicly assumed the Soviets had them deployed at the edges of their controlled territory as well. \n\nIt's hard to explain a non-event, but here are three factors that seem significant to me:\n\n- The US/NATO and USSR both relied on them _heavily_ for their war planning. For the US in particular, these were not just weapons that might be used in actual \"lower-than-full-armageddon\" conflicts, but were also key diplomatic tools used to reassure allies in the US \"nuclear umbrella\" that the US was committed to having their back against a conventional attack. (This aspect of US nuclear deployments is often unappreciated, but is still a factor even today.) \n\n- The treaties that regulate nuclear deployments (like INF, SALT, START) generally regulate by _delivery vehicles_ (e.g., missiles, subs, bombers) and rely heavily upon what are known as \"national technical means\" to verify compliance. This means, in essence, that the treaties work by assuming that a nation can, with satellites and overflights and so on, tell from a great distance whether the treaties are being complied with. So whatever you regulate with them needs to be detectable from a great distance. ICBM silos are super easy to see from satellites, and its easy enough to count bombers on runways and to keep track of when a nuclear-armed submarine goes in and out of port (and to count how many missile tubes it has, etc.). So these relatively large objects are pretty easy to verify, and thus good fodder for a treaty. _Some_ categories of tactical nuclear weapons could be treated this way, but many are too small to verify this way, or look too much like other conventional arms. (Imagine trying to verify whether someone was or wasn't deploying the [Davy Crockett system](http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/FM23-30-Davy-Crockett-storage.jpg), of which you could fit half a dozen in a car.) This doesn't mean you can't have a treaty regulating this sort of thing, but it does create immense difficulties if you want a verifiable treaty — it means you need to create some kind of alternative inspection regime, one which you might not want (because it would involve, for example, enemy inspectors on the ground near your secret military deployments). \n\n- The category of \"tactical nuclear weapon\" is itself pretty nebulous and ill-defined. It's sort of a catch-all category for things that don't fit into what became known as the \"nuclear triad\" (which itself, again, focused mostly on delivery vehicles), which range from the aforementioned nuclear mines and artillery to air-to-air missiles, anti-ballistic missiles, gravity bombs that could be considered tactical or not depending on the target, and so on. \"Tactical\" really is just contrasted with \"strategic,\" and that's really more about what your war planning intent is than the technology itself. Now, all categories of weapons are a little arbitrary — the difference between an \"intercontinental ballistic missile\" and an \"intermediate range ballistic missile\" is an arbitrary definition of range — but \"tactical\"/\"strategic\" has always been recognized as a totally fuzzy definition, and fuzzy definitions make treaties difficult, because treaties need to be pretty precise and pretty unambiguous if you don't want either endless litigation over them, or your enemy finding some kind of loophole. So, again, delivery vehicles are a much easier thing to relegate by themselves — \"you can have only X many bombers of a certain capability\" is much easier to regulate than \"you can only have X many weapons that adhere to the following vague list of properties\" or \"you can only have X many weapons assigned to this kind of target category\" (the latter being impossible to verify without having access to war plans). \n\nOK, so those are a lot of reasons! But it is worth noting that there was at least some ambition, in the post-Cold War, to explore ideas under which you could imagine regulate nonstrategic weapons. In 1997, Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin created a [framework](https://www.armscontrol.org/act/1997-03/features/joint-statements-helsinki-summit) for a START III Treaty, agreement that \"their experts will explore, as separate issues, possible measures relating to nuclear long range sea launched cruise missiles and tactical nuclear systems, to include appropriate confidence building and transparency measures.\" Well, that's all that came of that, because START III never got off the ground. And that is not exactly a treaty — it is sort of baby steps towards a possible treaty. \n\nYou could, in a very loose sense, thing of the ABM Treaty as a treaty regulating (one class of) non-strategic weapons, and the INF Treaty similarly applied to some systems that could be definitely used in tactical ways.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/y9dp5k/are_there_any_notable_examples_of_the_us_working/ | y9dp5k | 3 | t3_y9dp5k | Are there any notable examples of the U.S. working with a left-leaning government instead of overthrowing and replacing them with a right-leaning one during the Cold War? | * There are plenty of historical examples of the U.S. overthrowing and replacing left-leaning governments with right-leaning ones, and I am wondering if there are any significant examples of the U.S. choosing to work with left-leaning governments instead of overthrowing them.
* If there are, why did the U.S. choose to work with them instead of overthrowing them? | 0 | 0.5 | null | false | 1,666,309,226 | [
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"body": "I can recommend [this earlier answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/buwfoe/how_come_the_american_and_british_government/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) by u/ShadowsofUtopia, about US support for the Khmer Rouge",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pgmcyt/terminator_2_takes_place_in_1995_and_a_character/ | pgmcyt | 52 | t3_pgmcyt | Terminator 2 takes place in 1995 and a character is baffled by the idea of Skynet launching a nuclear strike at Russia because "They're our friends now". T2 was released in summer 1991 prior to the end of the Cold War. Would the average American think that we'd be friends with Russia in a few years? | 2,611 | 0.96 | null | false | 1,630,603,196 | [
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"body": "I will say that while plenty of people look at 1991 as \"prior to the end of the Cold War\", this was not exactly how people would have understood the geopolitical situation in early to mid 1991. \n\nVery technically, the Cold War, in the sense of the geopolitical confrontation between the United States and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that had been a mainstay of the globe since the end of World War II, was formally ended at the Malta Summit of December 2-3, 1989. This was more or less the message of both President Bush and President Gorbachev at the news conference following the summit.\n\nThe idea that the Cold War ended with the fall of the Soviet Union (and usually the \"fall of the Soviet Union\" itself gets dated to when Gorbachev resigned on December 25, 1991, although you could make an argument for earlier or later dates) is something of a retcon, albeit one that was adopted extremely quickly. President Bush himself in his State of the Union address on January 28, 1992 stated \"By the Grace of God, America won the Cold War\" - referring to the previous month's collapse. This was as much political posturing in a presidential election year as anything else - Bush was *not* pursuing the dissolution of the USSR as a political objective, and even on August 1, 1991 had spoken before the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet urging for Soviet unity and against nationalist secession, in the so-called \"Chicken Kiev\" speech.\n\nAnyway, back to Arnold and *Terminator 2*. When it was released on July 3, 1991, there was every reason to think that the Cold War was over, and that the Soviet Union would continue as a \"normal\" country with productive relations with the United States. Maybe not as an ally, but certainly in a reasonably non-confrontational and businesslike relationship of the sort that the United States and China have had (at least until recently). In 1991 the USSR no longer had satellites in Eastern Europe, was drawing down its military, was in a fair bit of economic and political turmoil, but had held reasonably free elections in 1989 (with similar elections at the republic level the following year), and was working towards establishing a new constitutional order under the Novo-Ogarevo talks (it was the official signing of the new constitution that the coup plotters stopped with their coup attempt on August 19, 1991). *Some* kind of change was appearing inevitable, but there was no reason to think that the Cold War was on, and plenty of those who heavily followed the increasingly complicated situation in the USSR at the beginning of 1991 thought that it would continue in some post-Cold War form.",
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"body": "Mid 1991 is a fascinating little historical freeze-frame moment to get such a perspective from, it's pretty interesting.\n\nLet's take a look at the state of the Cold War and geopolitics as of that time. First off, while the USSR did still officially exist on paper at the time it was clear to anyone paying attention that it had a limited lifetime and at best would continue onward as something very different than what it had been. Through the late 1980s there was a softening of relations between the West and the Communist Bloc. Various reforms such as Perestroika had opened up the Soviet Union and softened hard line communist rule and isolation. Western bands were even able to tour the Soviet Union and played concerts in Moscow. Peace talks and strategic arms limitation talks were also happening and proving fruitful, from the Reykjavik Summit in 1986 to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987 and then the first START treaty (which was signed just immediately after T2 was released but followed the well understood trend of softening relations away from war and toward peace at the time).\n\nThis coincided with a dramatic escalation in more open relationships with the West following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, even more so than had existed with Perestroika. Western goods flowed into the Soviet Union. A McDonalds was opened in Moscow in January of 1990, a few months later a Pizza Hut opened there as well. In late 1989 Pepsi ended up in an agreement where they took ownership of 20 Soviet naval warships to be scrapped as payment for syrup deliveries. At this point the future trajectory of this relationship seemed clear.\n\nThen there is the wave of revolutions and independence movements. In the late '80s these movements were still contentious, but after the fall of the Berlin Wall in late 1989 everything started going one way: away from hard line communist rule and more toward democracy and independence. East Germany basically ended concomitant with the opening of the border with the West and this was followed extremely rapidly by the adoption of plans to reunify Germany after free elections in East Germany in mid 1990 and then agreement to reunify in August of that year. Meanwhile, you have the complete crumbling of the Communist Bloc in Eastern Europe in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. By the end of 1989 the Eastern Bloc as it had existed, the foothold that the Soviet Union had to project Communist geopolitical influence, had ended. In early 1991 the Warsaw Pact was declared effectively null and void and later that year it was officially ended.\n\nWithin the USSR the first free elections *in the republics* (*Edit: see /u/Awesomeuser90's correction below*) were held in 1990, with the communist party losing control over many republics. Many of these republics declared their independence and began a messy process that resulted in military occupation of these breakaway republics from 1990 through the dissolution of the USSR in late 1991. Even though the ultimate fate of the breakaway Soviet republics had yet to be decided in mid 1991 at that point the assumption was that things would trend mostly as they had with the Eastern Bloc. And though the Soviet leadership in Moscow had sent in tanks and military forces to maintain control over the republics it was still very clear that it was playing by a different set of rules than it had during the Prague Spring of '68.\n\nMeanwhile, you have the other major geopolitical events of late 1990 and early 1991: the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War. I won't go into all the details of the Gulf War but there are a few key points. One is that even though Iraq had been an ally of the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, and much of their military equipment (especially tanks) were Soviet, they received zero support from the USSR during the conflict. Another is that the Soviet Union went along with UN Security Council resolutions which demanded Iraq leave Kuwait and also codified Iraq's defeat and obligations to disarm after the end of the conflict. These events are pretty remarkable because prior to the 1990s such a conflict would have been seen as a prime opportunity by the Soviets to weaken America by aiding Iraq. The outcome of the Gulf War reified the pronouncements of George HW Bush and Gorbachev on the transition of geopolitics to a \"New World Order\" with the ending of the Cold War. Additionally, the utter dominance of US forces, equipment, and tactics against what had been seen as, at least on paper, some fractional approximation of Soviet conventional military power began the process of elevating America to the status of unilateral \"hyperpower\" (at least until 9/11 changed the game).\n\nSo, even though late 1990 to early 1991 when Terminator 2 was filmed preceded the height of the early-90s period of \"good feelings\" between the US and Russia, after the USSR had been officially dissolved and with Boris Yeltsin as America's favorite drunk Russian uncle, it was still a common sentiment in America that the Soviet Union was on its way out and was no longer the bogeyman it had once been.\n\nInterestingly, the timing of Terminator 2 put it in a very precarious place in terms of the perception of political relations between the US and \"The Russians\". It was filmed/written early enough that it was buoyed by the wave of independence and democracy sweeping the Eastern Bloc as well as the end of the Cold War and the opening of Russia to cultural and economic interchange with the West (e.g. McDonald's in Moscow). But it was filmed just early enough to miss out on many of the messy details of Russian occupation of the Baltic SSRs (or of the last push of hardline communists in Russia) which wasn't resolved until late 1991.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xb181u/what_are_some_good_books_or_articles_for_someone/ | xb181u | 2 | t3_xb181u | What are some good books or articles for someone trying to understand US decision-making during the Cold War from a Structural Realist perspective? | I am looking for articles and/or books that describe decisions the United States made during the Cold War, especially ones that go into the reasoning for US action and/or one's that utilize a structural realist framework.
Another related thing that I am looking for is sources that counter or discuss the commonly-held notion that the conflicts between the United States and the Communist states at the time were due to ideological disparities like the ones between Communism and Capitalism/American-Style Democracy.
Some examples of what I think would be particularly helpful, if you have sources that don't fit these that you think might help I'd be very happy to see them as well,
* American decision makers describing why they acted in such-and-such way, either as a primary source or through respected historians,
* Case studies of the United States acting largely for the sake of/ or concern about power,
* Case studies of the United States acting in a way that doesn't fit in a purely/mostly ideological understanding of the Cold War,
* General books that go into the Cold War/Historical Analysis with Structural Realism in depth. | 6 | 0.69 | null | false | 1,662,847,100 | [
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/uu107p/why_is_there_no_russian_science_fiction_from_the/ | uu107p | 8 | t3_uu107p | Why is there no Russian Science Fiction from the Cold War? | I tried looking for Russian Science Fiction from the cold war but can't seem to find any? Is there actually such thing? I just wanted to see examples of Communist Science Fiction or how their science fiction is like. | 27 | 0.82 | null | false | 1,653,063,664 | [
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"body": "Although the original question focuses on the Cold War, please allow me to extend the scope of the issue to the entire existence of the USSR, as there are some interesting Soviet movies that predate the Second World War.\r\n\nArguably the first science-fiction movie made in the newly created USSR is *Аэли́та* \\[Aelita\\] made in 1924, directed by an accomplished filmmaker Yakov Protazanov and based on the novel under the same title by Alexey Tolstoy. It wouldn't be too much of an error to describe this movie as a Soviet version of the Edgar Rice Burroughs' *Princess of Mars* shot in a manner inspired by German impressionism. The story, much in line with the dominant ideology, focuses on the Terran expedition to Mars ruled by a local tyrant who is deposed during the popular revolution instigated by the visitors from Earth supported by the eponymous princess Aelita. The movie even incorporates an animated short *Interplanetary Revolution* made by Nikolai Khodatayev, Yuriy Myerkulov and Zenon Komissaryenko.\n\nIn the next year, the cinemas have shown another sci-fi movie, *Aero NT-54* directed by Nikolai Pyetrov and telling a story on an ingenious inventor of a revolutionary aeroplane engine, prompting several intelligence agencies to steal the designs. Patriotic and distinctly anti-Western sentiments were also clearly seen in the movies sharing the main theme, directly inspired by the events of the freshly ended Great War and possibly made to raise the spirits after the lost Polish-Bolshevik War. These are e.g. *Коммунит* \\[Communit\\] by Yakov Morin or *Наполеон Газ* \\[Napoleon Gas\\] by Syemyon Timoshenko. Both movies focus on a usage of a novel chemical weapon in a war between USSR and the West with the former movie telling a story of an inventor working on such weapon to support the worker's revolution and the latter showing the heroic defense of Leningrad again insidious Westerners. As one can imagine, the propaganda content is relatively high in both pictures. Similar theme can be found in the 1925 movie *Луч смерти* \\[Death Ray\\] by Lev Kuleshov and Vsyevolod Pudovkin. It is worth noting that although the movies were mean to carry a political message, the enemy is depicted not as 'capitalist' or 'imperialist' but rather unnamed fascist countries in Europe and America, most likely modeled after the Mussolini's Italy. After a hiatus in the genre during the late 1920s and early 1930s, the sci-fi theme has been then picked up to a great effect in 1935, when Alexandr Andriyevskiy directed a movie *Гибель сенсации* \\[Loss of sensation\\], an adaptation of a 1920 novel *Iron Riot* by Volodymyr Vladko, directly inspired by the seminal novel *R.U.R.* by Czech writer Karel Capek (that is an origin of the word 'robot') and can even be considered a sequel of the latter. The other movie is *Космический рейс* \\[Space voyage\\] by Vasili Zhuravlyov that will set the theme for the next wave of the Soviet sci-fi after the Second World War. This movie, even though predates the space race, tells a tale of a first space travel to the moon and is a good example of an early hard science fiction set in outer space, made possible by the fact that a scientific consultant for this movie was no other that Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, commonly called a 'father of spaceflight' and creator of the theoretical models of rocket operation and movement in space.\r\n\nThe anti-Western themes will shortly return in the 1950s mainly represented by the 1953 movie *Серебристая пыль* \\[Silvery Dust\\] by Abram Room, telling the story of several foreign powers fighting over the eponymous 'dust', a new sort of weapon. These themes will be also present in the movie *Торговец воздуха* \\[Air Merchant\\] (1967) directed by Vladimir Ryabtsev, where a climatic crisis potentially endangering the life on Earth is being abused by a ruthless industrialist, although this is largely attributed to the fact that he plot is based on a 1929 novel by Alexandr Belyayev and thus explores the themes that were not common in the sci-fi literature and cinematography of the era. But after the Second World War ended with tense but relatively stable division of the spheres of influence and the position of USSR in the world, as well as similarly stable position of the new type of government in the country itself seemed to be finally established, the focus of the science-fiction books and movies shifted from the East-West antagonisms and the support for the global, or even local communist revolution to social issues.\r *Туманность Андромеды* \\[Andromeda Nebula\\] (1967) by Yevgeniy Sherstobitov, although still somewhat heavy on the ideological propaganda side, is based on the 1959 novel under the same name by Ivan Yefremov that has been considered by Boris Strugatsky a breakthrough in Soviet science-fiction. marking the abandonment of the 'short aim theory'. The latter, typical for the earlier Soviet sci-fi works portrayed a world few years or decades in the future, and its associated themes and tropes were largely derived from the contemporary issues. The new works focused on the far future, with the issues and possibilities brought by new developments being completely new and unavailable for the contemporaries (interstellar travel, real artificial intelligence etc.). Its portrayal of the communist utopia, not unlike one in the *Noon. 22nd century* cycle by Strugatsky Brothers also marks the shift of the focus from the technology itself to the social issues resulting from the scientific and technological progress.\n\nBefore Soviet filmmakers tackled the idea of space travel, they also turned their eye towards a closer, but also poorly explored area that were the ocean depths. Exploration of the oceans is the main theme of the movies *Тайна вечной ночи* \\[Mystery of the Eternal Night\\] (1955) by Dimitri Vasiliev and Abram Room and *Тайна двух океанов* \\[Mystery of Two Oceans\\] by Konstantin Pipinashvili (1957). Similar subject, although in a completely different setting is explored in the movie *Человек-амфибия \\[*Amphibian Man\\] (1961) by Vladimir Chebotaryov and Gennadiy Kazansky that is an early take on transhumanist love story. This last movie was a great hit in USSR (best grossing movie of 1962) and satellite countries.\r\n\nAs the space race and the expansion beyond Earth in general became headline news, such themes could not but find their way into a silver screen. The period between mid-1950s and mid-1960s in Soviet science-fiction was characterized by the works depicting the expeditions to extraterrestrial bodies to some extent mimicking the 19th century adventure and marine novels, focusing on the hardship and dangers early space explores must have taken. Among such movies we can find *Планета бурь* \\[Planet of Storms\\] (1962) directed by Pavel Klushantsev. In addition, *Небо зовёт* \\[The Heaven Beckons\\] made in 1959 by Alexandr Kozyr and Mikhail Karyukov anticipates tensions related to the space race that , as it tells the story of a race for Mars landing with the Soviet crew saving the American one that tried to get a headstart at the cost of inadequate preparation.\r\n\nIt is worth noting that although Soviet cinematography was generally not distributed or even known outside the USSR, with some movies being sometimes screened in Eastern block countries, several movies were bought by American distributors and after heavy editing were screened abroad under different titles. This is the story behind *Небо зовёт* that has been edited by Roger Corman and screened in USA as *Battle Beyond the Sun* and the aforementioned *Planet of Storms was* edited so thoroughly that it has been turned into two separate movies: *Journey to the Prehistoric Planet* (1965) and *Journey to the Planet of Prehistoric Women* (1968). It is worth noting that the editing and production of these involves several high-profile filmmakers, such as Francis Ford Coppola or Peter Bogdanovich, although they generally were hiding behind pseudonyms (Thomas Colchart and Derek Thomas, respectively).\r\n\nA more humorous take on the development of technology, similar to the one present on the short stories of Robert Sheckley can be found in the movie *Его звали Роберт* \\[His Name was Robert\\] made in 1967 by Ilya Olshvanger, where an eponymous android, non-recognizable from a human and developed for the operations in environment lethal to humans (not unlike Dick's replicants from 'Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep') falls in love and ultimately breaks trying to perform every task he is asked for. Although the movie is a light-hearted comedy, it nevertheless explores many serious facets of the practical applications of the artificial intelligence. *Кин-дза-дза!* \\[Kin-dza-dza!\\] (1986) directed by Georgiy Danelya is an interesting example of a Soviet movie that keeps in line with what one would expect of such a work, but also introduces surrealist elements that, complete with a distinctive 'raggedy' aesthetics that evokes movies of Alex de la Iglesia, especially *Accion Mutante* (1993). Possibly due to the strong anti-establishment undertones and haphazard imagery and plot, the movie still has a cult following, with its animated version being made recently.",
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"body": "Some useful links:\n\n - [What was genre fiction like in the Soviet Union?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/806avj/what_was_genre_fiction_like_in_the_soviet_union/dux07g2/) with an answer by u/Noble_Devil_Boruta\n\n - [Was there any fantasy and science fiction in the USSR?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bm5vnu/where_there_any_fantasy_and_science_fiction_made/emvai5d/), with an answer by u/Pseudohistorian\n\n - A huge [answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8q6pkg/during_the_1950s_when_kids_in_the_us_were/e0hibkm/) on nuclear apocalypse and Soviet science fiction by u/lkieslowskifan",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pxui6j/chiang_kaishek_wanted_to_invade_mainland_china_in/ | pxui6j | 15 | t3_pxui6j | Chiang Kai-shek wanted to invade mainland China in the early 1960, but was stopped by the US who wanted to maintain the cold war balance. Were the ROC's forces in a state that would have allowed them to compete with the PRC? And would the invasion have found support from those living in the PRC? | 3,333 | 0.98 | null | false | 1,632,919,131 | [
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"body": "I worked for a while on an answer to this question but then lost the text that I've saved. I might eventually re-write it but I can supply some answers, context, and sources to look at.\n\n>Chiang Kai-shek wanted to invade mainland China in the early 1960, but was stopped by the US who wanted to maintain the cold war balance. Were the ROC's forces in a state that would have allowed them to compete with the PRC?\n\nThis is correct in that Jiang/Chiang always planned to reinvade and not just gain some territory, but to completely wipe out the CCP. However, numerous problems stood in the way:\n\n1. The Kuomintang (Nationalist) army was in poor condition by the end of the Civil War. It was also heavily occupied in suppressing Taiwan's native population and quickly establishing the authoritarian supremacy of the KMT. Realistically, the KMT army was not ready for any major operation off the island until the mid-late 50s, by which point the Korean War had started and the CCP had developed nuclear weapons. The US was tied down fighting Chinese and NK forces in Korea and had little interest in a wider war against China. The PLA had proved a difficult adversary even for the Americans in Korea, and likely still had hundreds of thousands if not millions of troops in reserve to defend China itself.\n2. The KMT wasn't that different from the CCP, to be honest. Both were highly patriarchal, authoritarian single-party states with an intense personality cult and essentially no free media or any of the things that we would consider basic civil rights. Jiang's police and military forces on Taiwan imprisoned, tortured, and killed thousands of indigenous Taiwanese as well as liberals and suspected Communists (basically anyone who might not want Jiang to be the Generalissimo). He was also widely held responsible for the loss of the Chinese Civil War because of military incompetence and corruption. The first one is arguable, but he was most definitely incredibly corrupt, living a life of opulence that most Chinese could literally not even imagine. The West was in a double bind. The KMT could not exist without Jiang as it was only held together by his authoritarian personality cult, but it also would never have a chance at re-taking China as long as Jiang was alive bc he was so widely hated by both the Chinese populace and by his foreign supporters.\n3. The KMT likely would have found limited support among any mainland population, except possibly in the major cosmopolitan cities where some liberals remained, but again they probably would not have seen the KMT as a huge improvement. During the Second Sino-Japanese War the Nationalists had strategically abandoned large parts of the country and drew the Japanese into urban fighting in major population centers in the hopes that the number of deaths and media outcry from foreign observers would force a peace treaty or lead a major European power to intervene on China's behalf. The Nationalists employed similar strategies during the Civil War, abandoning populations in order to slow the CCP down by having to cope with refugees and cities without functioning services. This strategy arguably worked against the Japanese, but the lost trust of the population was impossible to regain. How would you feel if you knew that in the case of invasion, your country might abandon defending you in order to make you a burden on the invading force, even if it just is the time it takes to execute you? Probably not very safe or grateful. Part of the CCP's appeal was their promise that China would become so powerful it could never be invaded again. A lot of older Chinese today continue to support the CCP based on this, economic growth, and positive initial experiences with Communist recruiters.\n4. On that - the Communists did actually enjoy tremendous support in the countryside. Early on, the Communists knew they had to win the support of the people. They built wells, schools for both children and adults, rural electricity, and helped exceptional students study in the Soviet Union to become engineers and scientists. The leadership was extremely strict with punishing any subordinates who abused or stole from villagers. This just highlighted further the KMT's treatment of civilians. KMT only cared much about major cities, during military campaigns they stole from and destroyed villages in order to feed themselves or deny the area to the enemy. Frankly put, the Nationalists (or at least Jiang) cared far more about killing as many Communists as possible than they did winning the hearts and minds of Chinese peasants. If some civilians had to be sacrificed to kill some dangerous Communists, that was just the cost of war. Maybe you can see some parallels to the US failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.\n5. Jiang couldn't transport his army back to China, so he was reliant on the US for major operations. When it turned out he could barely defend the barrier islands (Quemoy), the US somewhat understandably was unwilling to fund an expedition to the mainland that would probably have made the Bay of Pigs seem like a like a party on the beach. Jiang did use his remaining amphibious forces to do random raids on the Chinese coast in the early-mid 50s, which accomplished nothing strategically but did kill a bunch of random civilians and make the CCP even more determined to eventually invade Taiwan. Eventually the US did help him transport forces to Thailand and Cambodia to perform/assist with secret operations related to the developing Indochina/Vietnam situation, which seemed to satisfy Jiang. It seemed to matter less to him where he was killing Communists, as long as they were Communists.\n\nSources:\n\n[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/186810261804700203](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/186810261804700203)\n\n[https://www.jstor.org/stable/443798](https://www.jstor.org/stable/443798)",
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"body": "**There was likely not serious intent to Invade**\n\nThe prior answer ignores the most basic factor in ROC military operations, that the 1954 mutual-defence treaty with the United States effectively limited the ROC to defensive military operations.\n\nIn 1953 When the US declared a de-neutralization of the Taiwan strait, Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalists were caught off guard and in no position to attack the mainland. In July 1953, the limited military operation to occupy the Dongshan peninsula in Fujian was a costly failure in which the Nationalists suffered 3,300 causalities. The American MAAG responded to Dongshan by insisting that any future Nationalist operation involving 500 or more troops obtain US approval in advance.\n\nChiang had alternated between pursuing two forms of US aid in the early 1950s. At times seeking US support for a massive military buildup (costing $1.3 billion) ostensibly aimed at re-invading the mainland. At other times Chiang sought a mutual-defence treaty (resembling the US-South Korea treaty of 1953), expressing several times the ROC was willing to give the US veto power of ROC offensive operations as part of such as treaty.\n\nA mutual-defence treaty with the United States was ultimately signed on December 2, 1954. One of the provisions of the treaty established that “without mutual consent, the Nationalists would not take any offensive action which might provoke retaliation by the Chinese Communists” (Lin 2013). This treaty provision was kept secret to avoid damaging the KMT’s public image, but it unequivocally gave the US veto power over ROC offensive operations.\n\nFor similar reasons of maintaining morale and maintaining their public image, the ROC continued to publicly advocate for an invasion of the mainland. Just before the treaty was signed Chiang Kai-Shek announced a new “Planning Commission for the Recovery of the Mainland” and continued to make hawkish pronouncements in subsequent years. The 1960’s saw “Project National Glory” and various small-scale commando actions. But these small operations and loud talk of invasion were intended for the domestic political audience, and I am not aware of any serious intent for a full-scale invasion in 1960. Statements like Chiang’s 1961 New Year’s speech declaring “the Nationalist Army would soon return to save the Chinese people and the world from disaster” should not be taken at face value.\n\nAlthough Chiang’s hawkish pronouncements were often taken seriously by contemporary global media in the early 1960s, and although the PRC did respond with major movements of troops into Fujian, modern scholarship consistently concludes that Chiang did not seriously intend to invade and was merely trying to obtain specific military aid from the US. In May 1962, Chiang essentially told the US he would invade October 1 unless Taiwan was given “five C-123’s, sixteen B-57 Bombers and 20-25 Tank Landing Ships.” But US diplomats increasingly saw through Chiang’s pronouncements as empty threats. They, like Chiang, were keenly aware that a major ROC invasion would breach the mutual-defence treaty, leaving Taiwan without allies, facing down the PRC.\n\n**Military power and likely support on Mainland**\n\nI think this part of the question is fairly moot. But there was considerable opposition to the PRC in some places, such as the major revolt in Tibet in March 1959.\n\nBut while the CCP's base of support was strained in the early 1960's, the ROC really did not have the force projection capability or sufficient troops to mount a significant invasion of the mainland.\n\n**Sources:**\n* Lin, Hsiao-ting. Accidental State. Harvard University Press, 2016.\n* Lin, Hsiao-Ting. \"US-Taiwan military diplomacy revisited: Chiang Kai-shek, Baituan, and the 1954 mutual defense pact.\" Diplomatic History 37.5 (2013): 971-994.\n* Taylor, Jay. The generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the struggle for modern China. Harvard University Press, 2009.",
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"body": "i'd also like to link u/hellcatfighter's answer regarding how NRA veterans were treated + the campaign to suppress counterrevolutionaries here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ihfghq/how_were_the_nra_warlord_and_collaborationist/g30x3ed/",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/uu107p/why_is_there_no_russian_science_fiction_from_the/ | uu107p | 8 | t3_uu107p | Why is there no Russian Science Fiction from the Cold War? | I tried looking for Russian Science Fiction from the cold war but can't seem to find any? Is there actually such thing? I just wanted to see examples of Communist Science Fiction or how their science fiction is like. | 24 | 0.81 | null | false | 1,653,063,664 | [
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"body": "Although the original question focuses on the Cold War, please allow me to extend the scope of the issue to the entire existence of the USSR, as there are some interesting Soviet movies that predate the Second World War.\r\n\nArguably the first science-fiction movie made in the newly created USSR is *Аэли́та* \\[Aelita\\] made in 1924, directed by an accomplished filmmaker Yakov Protazanov and based on the novel under the same title by Alexey Tolstoy. It wouldn't be too much of an error to describe this movie as a Soviet version of the Edgar Rice Burroughs' *Princess of Mars* shot in a manner inspired by German impressionism. The story, much in line with the dominant ideology, focuses on the Terran expedition to Mars ruled by a local tyrant who is deposed during the popular revolution instigated by the visitors from Earth supported by the eponymous princess Aelita. The movie even incorporates an animated short *Interplanetary Revolution* made by Nikolai Khodatayev, Yuriy Myerkulov and Zenon Komissaryenko.\n\nIn the next year, the cinemas have shown another sci-fi movie, *Aero NT-54* directed by Nikolai Pyetrov and telling a story on an ingenious inventor of a revolutionary aeroplane engine, prompting several intelligence agencies to steal the designs. Patriotic and distinctly anti-Western sentiments were also clearly seen in the movies sharing the main theme, directly inspired by the events of the freshly ended Great War and possibly made to raise the spirits after the lost Polish-Bolshevik War. These are e.g. *Коммунит* \\[Communit\\] by Yakov Morin or *Наполеон Газ* \\[Napoleon Gas\\] by Syemyon Timoshenko. Both movies focus on a usage of a novel chemical weapon in a war between USSR and the West with the former movie telling a story of an inventor working on such weapon to support the worker's revolution and the latter showing the heroic defense of Leningrad again insidious Westerners. As one can imagine, the propaganda content is relatively high in both pictures. Similar theme can be found in the 1925 movie *Луч смерти* \\[Death Ray\\] by Lev Kuleshov and Vsyevolod Pudovkin. It is worth noting that although the movies were mean to carry a political message, the enemy is depicted not as 'capitalist' or 'imperialist' but rather unnamed fascist countries in Europe and America, most likely modeled after the Mussolini's Italy. After a hiatus in the genre during the late 1920s and early 1930s, the sci-fi theme has been then picked up to a great effect in 1935, when Alexandr Andriyevskiy directed a movie *Гибель сенсации* \\[Loss of sensation\\], an adaptation of a 1920 novel *Iron Riot* by Volodymyr Vladko, directly inspired by the seminal novel *R.U.R.* by Czech writer Karel Capek (that is an origin of the word 'robot') and can even be considered a sequel of the latter. The other movie is *Космический рейс* \\[Space voyage\\] by Vasili Zhuravlyov that will set the theme for the next wave of the Soviet sci-fi after the Second World War. This movie, even though predates the space race, tells a tale of a first space travel to the moon and is a good example of an early hard science fiction set in outer space, made possible by the fact that a scientific consultant for this movie was no other that Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, commonly called a 'father of spaceflight' and creator of the theoretical models of rocket operation and movement in space.\r\n\nThe anti-Western themes will shortly return in the 1950s mainly represented by the 1953 movie *Серебристая пыль* \\[Silvery Dust\\] by Abram Room, telling the story of several foreign powers fighting over the eponymous 'dust', a new sort of weapon. These themes will be also present in the movie *Торговец воздуха* \\[Air Merchant\\] (1967) directed by Vladimir Ryabtsev, where a climatic crisis potentially endangering the life on Earth is being abused by a ruthless industrialist, although this is largely attributed to the fact that he plot is based on a 1929 novel by Alexandr Belyayev and thus explores the themes that were not common in the sci-fi literature and cinematography of the era. But after the Second World War ended with tense but relatively stable division of the spheres of influence and the position of USSR in the world, as well as similarly stable position of the new type of government in the country itself seemed to be finally established, the focus of the science-fiction books and movies shifted from the East-West antagonisms and the support for the global, or even local communist revolution to social issues.\r *Туманность Андромеды* \\[Andromeda Nebula\\] (1967) by Yevgeniy Sherstobitov, although still somewhat heavy on the ideological propaganda side, is based on the 1959 novel under the same name by Ivan Yefremov that has been considered by Boris Strugatsky a breakthrough in Soviet science-fiction. marking the abandonment of the 'short aim theory'. The latter, typical for the earlier Soviet sci-fi works portrayed a world few years or decades in the future, and its associated themes and tropes were largely derived from the contemporary issues. The new works focused on the far future, with the issues and possibilities brought by new developments being completely new and unavailable for the contemporaries (interstellar travel, real artificial intelligence etc.). Its portrayal of the communist utopia, not unlike one in the *Noon. 22nd century* cycle by Strugatsky Brothers also marks the shift of the focus from the technology itself to the social issues resulting from the scientific and technological progress.\n\nBefore Soviet filmmakers tackled the idea of space travel, they also turned their eye towards a closer, but also poorly explored area that were the ocean depths. Exploration of the oceans is the main theme of the movies *Тайна вечной ночи* \\[Mystery of the Eternal Night\\] (1955) by Dimitri Vasiliev and Abram Room and *Тайна двух океанов* \\[Mystery of Two Oceans\\] by Konstantin Pipinashvili (1957). Similar subject, although in a completely different setting is explored in the movie *Человек-амфибия \\[*Amphibian Man\\] (1961) by Vladimir Chebotaryov and Gennadiy Kazansky that is an early take on transhumanist love story. This last movie was a great hit in USSR (best grossing movie of 1962) and satellite countries.\r\n\nAs the space race and the expansion beyond Earth in general became headline news, such themes could not but find their way into a silver screen. The period between mid-1950s and mid-1960s in Soviet science-fiction was characterized by the works depicting the expeditions to extraterrestrial bodies to some extent mimicking the 19th century adventure and marine novels, focusing on the hardship and dangers early space explores must have taken. Among such movies we can find *Планета бурь* \\[Planet of Storms\\] (1962) directed by Pavel Klushantsev. In addition, *Небо зовёт* \\[The Heaven Beckons\\] made in 1959 by Alexandr Kozyr and Mikhail Karyukov anticipates tensions related to the space race that , as it tells the story of a race for Mars landing with the Soviet crew saving the American one that tried to get a headstart at the cost of inadequate preparation.\r\n\nIt is worth noting that although Soviet cinematography was generally not distributed or even known outside the USSR, with some movies being sometimes screened in Eastern block countries, several movies were bought by American distributors and after heavy editing were screened abroad under different titles. This is the story behind *Небо зовёт* that has been edited by Roger Corman and screened in USA as *Battle Beyond the Sun* and the aforementioned *Planet of Storms was* edited so thoroughly that it has been turned into two separate movies: *Journey to the Prehistoric Planet* (1965) and *Journey to the Planet of Prehistoric Women* (1968). It is worth noting that the editing and production of these involves several high-profile filmmakers, such as Francis Ford Coppola or Peter Bogdanovich, although they generally were hiding behind pseudonyms (Thomas Colchart and Derek Thomas, respectively).\r\n\nA more humorous take on the development of technology, similar to the one present on the short stories of Robert Sheckley can be found in the movie *Его звали Роберт* \\[His Name was Robert\\] made in 1967 by Ilya Olshvanger, where an eponymous android, non-recognizable from a human and developed for the operations in environment lethal to humans (not unlike Dick's replicants from 'Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep') falls in love and ultimately breaks trying to perform every task he is asked for. Although the movie is a light-hearted comedy, it nevertheless explores many serious facets of the practical applications of the artificial intelligence. *Кин-дза-дза!* \\[Kin-dza-dza!\\] (1986) directed by Georgiy Danelya is an interesting example of a Soviet movie that keeps in line with what one would expect of such a work, but also introduces surrealist elements that, complete with a distinctive 'raggedy' aesthetics that evokes movies of Alex de la Iglesia, especially *Accion Mutante* (1993). Possibly due to the strong anti-establishment undertones and haphazard imagery and plot, the movie still has a cult following, with its animated version being made recently.",
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"body": "Some useful links:\n\n - [What was genre fiction like in the Soviet Union?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/806avj/what_was_genre_fiction_like_in_the_soviet_union/dux07g2/) with an answer by u/Noble_Devil_Boruta\n\n - [Was there any fantasy and science fiction in the USSR?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bm5vnu/where_there_any_fantasy_and_science_fiction_made/emvai5d/), with an answer by u/Pseudohistorian\n\n - A huge [answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8q6pkg/during_the_1950s_when_kids_in_the_us_were/e0hibkm/) on nuclear apocalypse and Soviet science fiction by u/lkieslowskifan",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/w176jb/during_the_cold_war_why_was_budapest_such_a/ | w176jb | 3 | t3_w176jb | During the Cold War, why was Budapest such a common travel destination for Soviet vacationers? | 8 | 0.79 | null | false | 1,658,063,700 | [
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"body": "For a fuller explanation of Soviet vacationing and tourism, you can check out an answer I wrote [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pejfni/comment/haxxlqy/).\n\nSpecifically for Hungary: Soviet international tourism was pretty much only group tours, and heavily favored \"friendly\" socialist countries. At least for the data I've seen in the 1970s-1980s, Hungary was near the top but still behind destinations like Bulgaria (which tended to be first place), East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland. \n\nTours, especially in Eastern Bloc countries, tended to gravitate towards major cities and capitals, because of that being where the major cultural and historic attractions being, that being where the international tourist infrastructure was, and not generally wanting foreigners wandering around the entire country. The USSR similarly allowed international group tours via the government agency InTourist, and these tended to stick to Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev, with a few other select destinations.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/w2qxqj/to_what_extent_did_nonsoviet_nations_consider/ | w2qxqj | 2 | t3_w2qxqj | To what extent did non-Soviet nations consider public education of the Russian language during the Cold War? | Although the United States isn't known for prioritizing foreign language education in its public schools, was there ever any overt or covert interest by the United States (or other non-Soviet nations) in educating the public in the language as a way to better understand perceived threats? Or rather, was there a fear that this might make citizens more sympathetic to Soviet interests? | 12 | 1 | null | false | 1,658,231,758 | [
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"body": "Russian language and culture has a long history in Western education. I'll discuss the American case, though Slavic and Soviet studies were important features of postwar European universities. France, in particular, benefitted from Russian refugees like Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov, and Vladimir Weidle. While some Russian emigres settled in Germany--Nabokov lived in Berlin, for example--political and economic instability made France more attractive. It's also worth mentioning a large number of refugees fled to Shanghai.\n\nWhile Russians and Slavs have been in America as intellectuals, workmen, and immigrants for as long as the country has existed--surely no one would discount the importance of Casimir Pulaski!--I would probably point to the late nineteenth century as the crystallization and institutionalization of 'Slavic Studies'. Leo Wiener, a Russian Jew, taught throughout the United States in the late 19th century before accepting a chair at Harvard in 1896 in Slavic literature. At the University of Chicago, Samuel Harper, the son of founder William Rainey Harper, studied in Petersburg during the 1905 Revolution and returned to teach Russian at the college. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s Slavic programs contended with the Russian Revolution, pulled into two different directions: most emigrant Slavicists were sympathetic to the Whites, while many Western intellectuals were sympathetic to the Bolsheviks. This played out more deeply in Europe, though by the close of the 1930s few Westerners supported Stalin due to the Great Purge.\n\nYale, Michigan, and Princeton's Slavic programs coalesced in the 1940s, at the onset of the Cold War; throughout the 1950s and 1960s many more colleges established and promoted Russian studies. In Nabokov's *Pnin*, Timofey teaches Russian at an upstate New York liberal arts college, one whose students are \"monstrously built farm boys and farm girls,\" and his lessons are forced to be “exercises in grammar brought out by the Head of a Slavic Department in a far greater college than Waindell—a venerable fraud whose Russian was a joke.\" This passage tells us quite a bit about Nabokov's perception of Russian in the academy, and shows us that smaller, regional colleges offered rough instruction in Russian by the mid-1950s. That language instruction misses the mark on culture and literature is not terribly surprising, but Russian was largely accessible for American college students. \n\nSlavic (and Soviet) studies were supported by the US Government, indeed as 'a way to better understand perceived threats,' and Russian remains a Critical Language for the [US State Department](https://exchanges.state.gov/cls).",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/t83sqa/during_the_cold_war_the_ussr_claimed_that_the_cia/ | t83sqa | 7 | t3_t83sqa | During the Cold War, the USSR claimed that the CIA infested Warsaw Pact farmlands with Colorado Potato Beetles to destroy their crops by dropping them from planes. Did this claim hold any water? | 108 | 0.98 | null | false | 1,646,588,059 | [
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"body": "This claim originally comes from East Germany, and specifically from 1950, when a major Potato Beetle infestation was blamed on them being dropped from American planes. \n\nThis became a very widespread belief in Eastern Bloc countries (personally I encountered older people saying potato beetles were a CIA plot in Kazakhstan some 15 years ago). It doesn't particularly hold up, though.\n\nFirst is the issue that while Colorado Potato Beetles are a non-native invasive species in Europe and Asia, they didn't just appear in the 1950s - there had been a recorded presence of them in Germany since the late 19th century, and they were relatively common. \n\nThere *was* an infestation of the beetles in East Germany in 1950, and this threatened the potato crop, which was especially important to East Germans in the aftermath of World War II. But this seems to have been more likely caused by reduced use of pesticides, rather than them being dropped by American planes. The planes idea was somewhat plausible because of the [air corridors](https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/map.cfm?map_id=334) that were open to American (and British and French) planes flying from West Germany to West Berlin, over East Germany, so there were often American planes overhead (especially during the Berlin Airlift). However, although the British had studied the feasibility of dropping potato beetles on Germany in the First World War, there doesn't seem to be any strong evidence that anyone was seriously considering this during the Cold War.\n\nIt did make great propaganda for East Germany, as a lot of ink was split on the campaign against Amikäfer, or \"Yank Bugs\", and student volunteers were sent out to potato fields to collect/squish them. It absolutely was a constantly-repeated official message that the beetles were there as a result of American sabotage. \n\nThis is way less likely for the Soviet Union, by the way. Even if the US was dropping beetles out over East Germany, they weren't regularly flying planes over the USSR, and the ones that were, like the U2s, weren't dropping beetles from 70,000 feet.\n\nHere is a [link](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23929124) to a BBC article on the potato beetle battle in East Germany that I am providing because it especially has some great propaganda posters.\n\nAlso of interest from a scientific perspective might be this [scientific paper](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16313587/) \"The voyage of an invasive species across continents: genetic diversity of North American and European Colorado potato beetle populations\", by Alessandro Grapputo et al. Genetic comparison of North American and European potato beetle populations points to a much lower genetic variability among the European beetles, which would support a history of the European beetles coming from a single founding event (introduction into Europe) in the early 20th century.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vgnqor/was_there_ever_something_built_like_fallout/ | vgnqor | 4 | t3_vgnqor | Was There Ever Something Built Like "Fallout Vaults"? During The Cold War | During The Cold War, when there was a risk of a nuclear warfare; was there ever an attempt, or even an idea to build underground fallout shelters?
I played a lot of Fallout games recently, so that got me curious. | 4 | 0.62 | null | false | 1,655,737,978 | [
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"body": "In the United States, fallout shelter development came in basically two varieties. One was for regular people. Most of these were something that people were supposed to build themselves, in their basements or in special structures, on their own property. This was the bulk of the fallout shelter program in the early 1960s, encouraging people to build their own shelters, and took the form of giving out information as to how to do this (pamphlets, books) and I believe some tax rebates for funds spent on this. It got a lot of attention but did not end up with a lot of shelters built. \n\nUnder the same early 1960s Civil Defense program, existing spaces that could be used as short-term fallout shelters were identified in buildings. These are still marked today with the classic \"fallout shelter\" signs you'll see on many older buildings, especially municipal buildings, in American cities. These spaces were meant to be stocked with supplies; they are no longer. \n\nIn both of these cases, you're talking about shelters that were meant to reduce the amount of radiation received by people within them during the period in which the amounts of fallout radiation could be an acute danger (enough to make you sick or kill you). At most this lasts a few weeks. So it is not like the vaults in _Fallout_ — they are not meant to last for centuries or be self-sufficient or anything like that. They are just places that one could stay in for a few days or weeks, with food and water and bedding, until it was safe to leave the area. (The area might still be contaminated with fallout, but the radiation will have dropped to levels that people can move through the area to less-contaminated areas, and decontamination can begin.) \n\nThe more _Fallout_-like approaches were not Civil Defense, in that they weren't for regular people. They were part of Continuity of Government, which is basically a catch-all phrase for policies meant to keep the US government alive and kicking after nuclear war, so it could coordinate a rebuilding of the nation. These include very fancy and specialized facilities, like Raven Rock, Cheyenne Mountain, Mount Weather, and Greenbrier, which were underground (many under-mountain) facilities meant to allow the core military brass, the President, Congress, cabinet agencies, and so on, to survive nuclear war, coordinate responses during a nuclear war, and coordinate the rebuilding of the country after the war. It is unclear to me exactly how long you were supposed to be able to live in these things, but presumably for longer than a standard fallout shelter — they were meant to be new seats of government, essentially, after DC was presumed destroyed. Again, the intensity of radiation from fallout drops off dramatically after a few days and especially weeks, so it is not like in the _Fallout_ games (or the popular imagination) where you would be spending decades or centuries in there. (Raven Rock, the real facility, is clearly the inspiration for Raven Rock, the Vault in _Fallout 3_, but I suspect the similarity ends at the name and basic role.)\n\nSeparately, some states also have emergency management facilities that were built in this period and are also underground. I have toured the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) headquarters, which was built in the early 1960s and meant to be able to survive fallout from an attack on Boston. It is entirely underground and a very large facility that includes all sorts of communication technology, bunks, even a small morgue. It was built so that the Massachusetts Civil Defense Agency would be able to survive a nuclear attack for a few weeks, and then be able to coordinate the state-level responses. Under President Kennedy, this sort of facility was meant to become common throughout the country, but he was assassinated shortly after it was completed (they have a letter on the wall from him talking about how great the facility is, and it's dated a few days before he went to Dallas, if I recall), and after Kennedy the enthusiasm for this kind of thing scaled back a lot.\n\nLastly, one other possible _Fallout_ inspiration — there was, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, some interest in building underground facilities for general civilian use in the US. My favorite of these is the Abo Elementary School in Artesia, New Mexico, which was built entirely underground. It was in use until 1995, and there were many studies of it (and the handful of other underground schools built) to see if having a school entirely underground (no windows, etc.) impacted the psychological well-being of students and teachers (my recollection is that it isn't much worse than a regular school in that respect, but I haven't looked at these in a while). So one sees echoes of this sort of thing in the Vault school of _Fallout 3_, for example. \n\nSo, in short, one can say that the _Fallout_ series definitely drew upon inspiration from real-life fallout shelters and bunkers that were developed in the US in the early 1960s, but nothing quite like a _Fallout_ Vault — a long-term, self-sufficient, multi-generational underground community — was ever built or really contemplated. (I am leaving out a lot of other more science-fiction aspects of the _Fallout_ Vault system as well, of course — deliberate experiments, etc.) One reason for that is that you don't really need that sort of thing. The _Fallout_ games do not have a realistic depiction of the aftermath of nuclear war, or of radiation. The other reason is that building a _Fallout_ Vault-like facility would require far more resources than anyone would be willing to spend, and technological breakthroughs that arguably we can't really even do today (they verge on the kinds of tech we'd need to have a colony on another planet, and we're not quite there — look into the problems that Biosphere 2 had, if you want some indication of the difficulty of running truly close-loop ecosystems). \n\nI have not touched on the Soviet approaches here (you can find other answers on Soviet Civil Defense if you use the search function), but there are some similarities, and some differences, but they did not build self-sufficient \"Vaults\" either, for the same reasons. \n\nA very nice history of fallout shelters in the US is Kenneth D. Rose, _One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture_ (New York University Press, 2001). For more on continuity of government plans in the US, check out Garrett M. Graff, _Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself — While the Rest of Us Die_ (Simon & Schuster, 2017). On the Soviet approaches, see Edward Geist, _Armageddon Insurance: Civil Defense in the United States and the Soviet Union, 1945-1991_ (University of North Carolina Press, 2019).",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/uq61w7/why_did_southeast_asia_not_attempt_to_create_an/ | uq61w7 | 4 | t3_uq61w7 | Why did Southeast Asia not attempt to create an Operation Condor equivalent, given the abundance of Cold War Southeast Asian Right-wing / anti-Communist regimes? | #
Suharto's Indonesia, Marcos's Philippines, the Thai military juntas, South Vietnam before it lost to the North, and even somewhat "milder" authoritarian states like Singapore that relied more on legalistic rather than outright militaristic repression (eg. suing opponents, compliant courts, press censorship, outlawing mass assemblies etc.)…
It seems Cold War Southeast Asia was full of rightwing authoritarian states (predictably backed by the US to varying degrees), and yet unlike in South America, **there doesn't seem to be much record of the various Southeast Asian regimes banding together and creating their own version of Operation Condor**, the interstate Right-wing state-terrorist campaign to imprison, torture, kill, disappear or otherwise crush and destroy the collective South American Left and resistance. This despite that Condor itself was also inspired largely by Indonesia's lead in massacring its Communists (real or imagined) after Suharto's coup in 1965.
I know Condor's creation of course is as much due to US support as it is to cooperation among the South American states themselves: Argentina, Chile, Brazil, etc., but was either enough US support or enough interstate collaboration absent in the SEA region? Maybe the US's hands were tied in the Vietnam War in a way/to a degree they weren't in Latin America?
Or maybe because there wasn't much movement of a transnational Left within Southeast Asia, in part because unlike the Spanish-speaking vast majority in South America (and Brazilian Portuguese for almost the entire remainder), the SEA states were split among many more languages more evenly, and so it would be harder to move across countries or communicate anyway on a region-wide basis, *both* for the Left/progressive resistance *and* for the Right-leaning governments pursuing them? Even English and Chinese I don't think had the same level of penetration in SEA as a whole that Spanish had in South America, so maybe?
***Disclaimer: I am NOT saying that Southeast Asia*** **should've** ***created its own Condor equivalent.*** *I'm just curious why one wasn't made given at least some of the circumstances conducive to one were there.* | 18 | 0.79 | null | false | 1,652,621,020 | [
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"body": "Welcome to /r/AskHistorians. **Please [Read Our Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules) before you comment in this community**. Understand that [rule breaking comments get removed](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/h8aefx/rules_roundtable_xviii_removed_curation_and_why/).\n\n#Please consider **[Clicking Here for RemindMeBot](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/uq61w7/why_did_southeast_asia_not_attempt_to_create_an/%5D%0A%0ARemindMe!%202%20days)** as it takes time for an answer to be written. Additionally, for weekly content summaries, **[Click Here to Subscribe to our Weekly Roundup](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=AHMessengerBot&subject=Subscribe&message=!subscribe)**.\n\nWe thank you for your interest in this *question*, and your patience in waiting for an in-depth and comprehensive answer to show up. In addition to RemindMeBot, consider [using our Browser Extension](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/d6dzi7/tired_of_clicking_to_find_only_removed_comments/), or getting the [Weekly Roundup](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=subredditsummarybot&subject=askhistorians+weekly&message=x). In the meantime our [Twitter](https://twitter.com/askhistorians), [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/askhistorians/), and [Sunday Digest](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=title%3A%22Sunday+Digest%22&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) feature excellent content that has already been written!\n\n\n*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskHistorians) if you have any questions or concerns.*",
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"body": "Well, because Southeast Asia is the epicenter of the blueprint made for Operation Condor. I guess it is the petri dish for the disasters given and backed by the anti-communist and Mccarthyist idea of the US government. \n\nSuharto's New Order started the \"coup/dictator formula\" to oust the left-leaning leaders around the world.\n\nThe book, Jakarta Method, explained it very well.\n\n[Jakarta Method review](https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2020/08/02/book-review-the-jakarta-method-washingtons-anticommunist-crusade-and-the-mass-murder-program-that-shaped-our-world-by-vincent-bevins/)",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/sriyvy/during_the_cold_war_the_us_sold_millions_of_tons/ | sriyvy | 4 | t3_sriyvy | During the Cold War, the US sold millions of tons of wheat to the USSR. Was this trade controversial in America for essentially propping up its main enemy? Was it controversial in the USSR for demonstrating weakness to its main enemy? | 313 | 0.98 | null | false | 1,644,760,011 | [
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"body": "For the **Soviet** part: USSR food policy shifted in the early 1970's. They chose using grain imports (mostly from satellite countries, third world countries ^1 and USA) to balance surges and shortfalls in production. Those imports were very minor compared to domestic production (see the analyses below), so USSR didn't demonstrate weakness, perhaps used this trade as a propaganda. USSR experts can give more info on their part.\n\n\nLet's see the **USA** part: Basically money came first even if their grain fed the enemy.\n\n\nUSSR's first grain purchase was in 1972, 19 million metric tons within 3 months. After that, Soviets purchased unexpected high amounts of grain from USA and this created some issues and disrupted domestic USA markets. US president Gerald R. Ford suspended grain export to USSR until a \"*US-USSR Long-Term Grain Trade Agreement*\" was negotiated and signed in 1975.^2\n\nHere is the summary of the terms and conditions for the curious ^3 : \n\n- Agreement is valid from 01 October 1976 to 30 September 1981.\n- USSR will purchase 6 million metric tons of US wheat and corn in approximately equal proportions.\n- USSR is allowed an additional 2 million metric tons of grain in any given 12 month period without any consultation. \n- Purchases in excess of these quantities mentioned above would be authorized only after consultation.\n- USA can suspend the guaranteed minimum purchase if USA supplies totaled less than 225 million metric tons.\n- Purchases and/or sales of grain were to be made at prevailing market prices (no provision for official US funding)\n\nThis agreement is presented to US public as \"*promoting American economic stability and a positive step in our relations with the Soviet Union*\" by Gerald R. Ford. ^4 AFAIK there were not much controversy at that time.\n\nAgreement went well for both parts in the following years until Soviets invaded Afghanistan (a completely different topic) and USA issued an embargo to USSR between January 1980 to April 1981. This period was the most controversial and tricky part for USA: Honor the current agreement or completely withdraw it. \n\nYou can read detailed analyses of [US National Security Council (NSC)](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/19810721A.pdf), [another NSC discussion paper](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/19810721.pdf) and [US Department of The Treasury](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP83M00914R000600030092-6.pdf) in unclassified \"Secret\" and \"Confidential\" CIA documents about the dilemma. \n\nThose documents simply lists pros and cons of both honoring/withdrawing the agreement. They also mention European Economic Community (EEC) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) were pressuring on US administration for a withdrawal. \n\nAt the end, newly elected US president R.Reagan decided to continue honoring the agreement and allowed seeking a renewal of the agreement (You can see US president Reagan's check marks on executive decisions in some of the documents linked above.) You can read the aftermath of Reagan's decisions in another unclassified \"Secret\" CIA document from [1985](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/19850701C.pdf) on page 5: \n\n- The USSR continues to be the single largest buyer of grain from the US.\n- During the 1984-85 market year, Soviet purchases of grain reached a record 227 million metric tons.\n\nAs i said at the beginning, money came first ¯\\\\_(ツ)_/¯\n\n\n\n---\n\n1 A friendly reminder that \"*third world country*\" term was originally used for neutral (read non-ally/non-axis during WW2) countries, not under-developed countries as used today. \n\n2 https://www.nytimes.com/1975/10/21/archives/us-and-russia-agree-on-5-years-of-grain-exports-soviet-will-buy-6.html \n\n3 https://case.hks.harvard.edu/the-us-ussr-grain-agreement/ \n\n4 https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/statement-the-united-states-soviet-union-agreement-grain-sales",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ritrky/during_the_cold_war_john_f_kennedy_received_two/ | ritrky | 5 | t3_ritrky | During the Cold War John F Kennedy received two puppies from the Soviet Union that were decedents of Strelka, one the first creatures to enter earth's orbit and come back alive. One of those dogs later had puppies with another White House dog. Do they have any known descendants? | Of the sources I found they usually just say that these "pupniks" were given away to other dignitaries, is there any information from what happened past that? | 647 | 0.97 | null | false | 1,639,783,806 | [
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"body": ">JFK: How did this dog get here?\n\n>Jackie Kennedy: I'm afraid I asked Khrushchev for it in Vienna when I was running out of things to say.\n\n>-- Transcript from the Kennedy Library\n\nPushinka (\"little bit of fluff\") arrived somewhat by accident; Jackie Kennedy had been adjacent to Khrushchev at a June 1961 state dinner in Vienna.\nShe mentioned the \"space dogs\" in conversation (the puppies of the mother Strelka, who was on Sputnik V, and Pushok) and asked as a joke: \"Why don't you send me one?\"\n\nSo the Kennedys had another dog to go with a menagerie including (according to a memoir from the Presidential kennel keeper):\n\"ponies and parakeets and cats and ducks and rabbits and guinea pigs\". Particularly of note was Charlie:\n\n>He knew all about presidential precedent and gave a growl any time a dog preceded him through a doorway, which naturally amused the President.\n\nThere was some supicion when Pushinka arrived and she was throughly checked for listening devices and the like, but the\nKennedy family (and the country) soon warmed to her, especially on June 14, 1963 when Pushinka and Charlie had four puppies.\n\nThe \"pupniks\" were named Streaker, Blackie, Butterfly, and White Tips. Simultaneous to this Jackie Kennedy was\npregnant, but unfortunately her child (Patrick) was born prematurely and died after two days.\n\nMs. Kennedy learned in the meantime that there were 5000 letters from people asking for the puppies. She decided\nto use the letters as a contest. As she writes to the White House secretary:\n\n>Would you have someone go through them [the letters] and pick out a few likely candidates, without telling anyone we are doing this.\nI would like to give one of the puppies to some child, who is really deserving, who has never had a dog, or who is sick, etc.\n\nThe children who were chosen were Karen House of Westchester, Illinois...\n\n>I would like to have one of your pretty dog puppies. I would like a puppy so much because I have never had a dog before and I like yours very much.\n\n...and Mark Bruce of Columbia, Missouri, quite distressed from losing his dog in an accident.\n\n>On Jun 8th I was playing baseball I was batting and our dog Midget got behind me when swinging the bat and I\naccidently hit her in the head. She died almost immediately.\n\nThe FBI did some screening (apparently checking if Midget's death was indeed just a sad accident) and the winners were announced.\nKaren Bruce got Butterfly and Mark Bruce got Streaker.\n\nJackie told the children to keep in touch, and there plans at least with Mark Bruce to visit in January, but unfortunately\nJFK was assassinated before this could come to pass.\n\nAfter the assassination, the remaining dogs were given away. One, Blackie, was given to Kennedy's sister Patricia (it was intended for\nthe daughter Sydney but she had hay fever); when she was divorced from her husband (Peter Lawford, actor and member of the Rat Pack)\nPeter got the dog in the divorce. Blackie does make a further appearance with Peter on television in 1971, [as you can watch here](https://therokuchannel.roku.com/watch/bf29370e7a1b5e619005591c966d924e),\non _Betty White's Pet Set_. (Unfortunately I have not been able to track Blackie's career past this point.)\n\nThe last dog, White Tips, went with Luella Hennessey, longtime nurse to the Kennedys. Unfortunately I haven't been able to track her dog either (she did an interview in 1964 but doesn't mention the dog).\n\nKaren House is quoted a 1964 AP article that Butterfly was \"just another one of the dogs on our block; our dog. But whenever and wherever we go where people know us, she attracts a great deal of attention. She loves it.\" The mentions of Butterfly in the historical record end there.\n\nSo it seems like the trails end fairly quickly, but Streaker -- Mark Bruce's dog -- I can give the complete story to, as\nMr. Bruce later [wrote a book](https://www.jackieboydog.com/) that talks about both the dog and his correspondence with Jackie Kennedy (which he\nkept up until she died).\n\nMark was very happy with his dog all the way through his childhood. \n\n>Streaker was a great pet, he was everything and more that Midget was to me.\n\nWhen he was an adult and at college, his brother was watching Streaker. Unfortunately, Streaker found his way out of an open gate and into a road where he was hit by a car and died; at least he made it to old age.\n\nThis does not mean there are no descendants, however: while alive Streaker became the father of 3 puppies. (Mark offered one to Jackie but she declined as they had too many pets already.) I have again not been able to track further but it means their family line may yet be continuing.\n\n...\n\nHere's a [ten minute news story](https://wgntv.com/backstory/classic-boy-gets-dog-story-with-cold-war-twist/) about Streaker, including more pictures of the dog and a video of Mark Bruce receiving the dog.\n\nBryant, T., Leighton, F. S. (1975). *Dog Days at the White House: The Outrageous Memoirs of the Presidential Kennel Keeper*. United States: Macmillan.\n\nLautemann, E. (2018). *The Dogs of Camelot: Stories of the Kennedy Canines*. Lyons Press.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tqc1ek/whenever_i_see_discussions_of_cold_war_military/ | tqc1ek | 5 | t3_tqc1ek | Whenever I see discussions of Cold War military balance in Europe, it's always framed as whether NATO could hold off a Soviet or Warsaw Pact attack. Why isn't the opposite scenario discussed? | Is it just because I'm an American reading English-languages sources, and so there's always this defensive framing? Or did the Soviet Union also envision the potential conflict in this way? | 18 | 0.92 | null | false | 1,648,481,820 | [
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"body": "Pretty much all of the Soviet planning we have access to assumes that NATO attacks first, yes. One of the better-documented \"command post\" exercises, ЗАПАД-77 (West-77) opens this way, for example. Other windows into their strategic outlook at different points of the Cold War, such as the successive editions (1962, 1963, 1968) of Sokolovsky's highly influential *Military Strategy*, reinforce this view. Sokolovsky centers much of his discussion on the assumption that NATO was ideologically unable *not* to be permanently hostile towards the Soviet Union; this was consistent with Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy and it seems to me that at least some in the planning establishment really did believe it. Statements we have from after 1991 by high-ranking members of the Soviet military reflect this; Sergei Akhromoyev's memoirs mention a feeling in the 1980s that the general balance in Europe was turning against the Soviets & that the US was pressuring them very aggressively both politically and economically, and Col.-Gen. Andrian Danilevich's candid interviews in the so-called Hines Report of 1993-95 indicate a strong consensus in the General Staff that while the Soviets had absolutely no intention of starting a war, they believed a war with NATO was quite possible and they were planning vigorously to *not lose*. Now, in their eyes the best way to not lose was to either preempt this attack (to include, in an extreme case, preemptive nuclear strikes on NATO nuclear delivery systems), or at least to absorb it and counterattack aggressively without delay. There's strong, strong influence from 1941 here: a couple of successive generations of Soviet officers felt that the absolute worst thing that could happen on their watch was a second surprise invasion of the USSR with the war then being fought on their soil. There's also doctrinal reasons why they believed, in the modern age, the offense was the more advantageous form of warfare, since it allowed one to more rapidly disaggregate the enemy's military system - his logistics, command nodes, and second-echelon forces, without which he simply could not fight effectively.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/t5le4e/the_bbc_produced_threads_1984_during_the_cold_war/ | t5le4e | 7 | t3_t5le4e | The BBC produced 'Threads 1984' during the cold war, presumably to remind their public of the horrors that a nuclear war would bring. Did the USSR also create similar documentary material to educate the Russian public in the same way? | 25 | 0.91 | null | false | 1,646,289,779 | [
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"body": "From an [earlier answer of mine](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5wl8j6/did_the_soviet_union_produce_postapocalyptic/) most of the links still work, but some are dead.\n\n**Part I**\n\nOne of the staple observations on Eastern bloc SF during the Cold War made by Western writers was that SF behind the Iron Curtain treated the specter of nuclear annihilation as a taboo. Exploring this dystopian possibility for humanity implied that the Soviet military was unable to prevent such an occurrence, moreover, total annihilation also implied that the Soviet government shared responsibility for this type of holocaust. While it is true that there was a taboo against depicting nuclear destruction, Eastern bloc SF could not escape the realities of the atomic age, and that included the potential use of nuclear weapons or other WMDs. Yet Eastern bloc creators tended to approach the nuclear genie in a different fashion than their Western counterparts. Evgeny Voiskunsky, one of Soviet cultural gatekeepers of SF, would write in 1981 that \n\n> Foreign (Western) science fiction focuses attention on the horrors of the future (the extinction of mankind in thermonuclear war, ecological disasters, monstrous mutations, the withering away of all spiritual life in the midst of material affluence, and so on). This has a certain justification—humanity needs to be warned… But it is one thing to warn and another to frighten, and here Western writers often go too far.\n\nVoiskunsky’s observation does not preclude the discussion of nuclear war in Eastern bloc SF, but it does provide an insight into how Eastern bloc SF treated the bomb. Eastern bloc SF did not ignore the possibility of nuclear warfare, but it did tend to treat the possibility in an oblique manner. \n\n Of course, Eastern bloc consumers of SF had access to some Western SF critical of the West’s cavalier approach to nuclear weapons. The 1959 film *On the Beach* did receive a gala showing in Moscow, one of the first for a major American motion picture. Ray Bradbury’s antinuclear short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” along with other works by Bradbury were translated in the USSR and later received a [haunting animated adaptation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t113Z3BBPP8). Dystopian fiction produced in the West buttressed the state ideology that capitalism was innately piratical and expansionistic and the presence of public intellectuals like Bradbury was a sign that some in the West recognized that the USSR was on the right side of history.\n\n Yet, Western visions of nuclear apocalypse were something of a minority in the Eastern bloc SF scene. Creators like the Polish SF writer Stanisław Lem had access to Western materials and occasionally corresponded with Western SF creators, but this was far from the norm. Instead, Eastern bloc SF tended to develop its own indigenous approach to nuclear weapons that occasionally incorporated Western tropes and motifs. Valentin Ivanov’s 1951 novel *The Energy Is Under Our Dominion* used tropes from spy novels as NKVD agents bravely foiled a plot by Western intelligence to detonate a nuclear device inside the USSR was one example of this borrowing. Leonid Zhigarev 1958 short-story “Green Light” was a direct response to Heinlein’s “The Long Watch”, which appeared translated in same issue of the SF journal *Znanie-Sila*. In contrast to Heinlein’s protagonist that adventurously uses nuclear weapons to prevent a dictator from using them, Zhigarev presents a protagonist at a Soviet nuclear facility who hopes that the green light indicating peace will always stay green. But these works were somewhat exceptional. The bulk of Eastern SF thus had to contend with the wider culture and politics of the Eastern bloc, and the result was superficially quite different than Western SF on this issue. \n \nLike much of popular culture within the Eastern bloc, SF had to operate under the burden of having to fit inside a Marxist-Leninist *weltanschauung*. This posed a dilemma for Eastern bloc SF somewhat more so than popular music or poetry. The central conceit for SF is that it provides a vision of the future while Marxist-Leninism posits that it *is* the future. Marx predicted a utopian golden age after the revolution and seizure of production by the proletariat after an indeterminate period of proletarian government. One of the major ideological points of the USSR was that its socialism would create Marx’s communism in the not too distant future. This constrained Eastern bloc SF creators in that it was difficult to deviate from what the state held as orthodoxy. \n\nIvan Yefremov’s landmark 1957 novel *Andromeda: A Space-Age Tale* exemplified the difficulties in portraying the future for eastern bloc creators. Yefremov spends a great deal of the novel exploring the now ageless utopia achieved by communism in which national differences are now subsumed in a paradise. The 1976 [film adaptation](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3mwai1_the-andromeda-nebula-1967-pt-1_creation) tries to do justice to the novel’s utopianism, including a rather odd animated dance number at 16:00), in which humanity is part of a wider, interplanetary federation of like-minded communist utopia, the Great Ring. Yefremov’s vision meshed well into Marxist-Leninist precepts that revolution and subsequent communism were the inevitable results of history, yet the specter of nuclear annihilation is present in some parts of the novel. *Andromeda*’s text refers to the twentieth century as the “age of disunity” and notes this was a time when humanity unwisely experimented with unsafe forms of nuclear energy. The consequences of such experimentation is briefly explored in the novel’s prologue in which an earth starship orbits a world in which nuclear experimentation has destroyed the planet Zirda. Although Yefremov left the type of experimentation vague, the novel does demonstrate a degree of uncertainty about the safety of nuclear science. \n\nDisplacing the responsibility for global nuclear destruction onto an alien culture was a literary device used in Lem’s first novel, *The Astronauts* in 1951. Like many other Eastern bloc SF writers, Lem created a vision in which communism has triumphed and transformed the world, this time in the distant year 2003. The discovery of a remnants of a Venusian probe spark an international expedition to the planet, which discovers that the probe was a warning that the Venusians sought to colonize earth Unfortunately for these Venusian imperialists, their own nuclear genie escaped and a nuclear civil war destroyed the planet. While the politics of *The Astronauts* was obvious, the joint Polish-GDR film adaptation, 1960’s [*The Silent Star*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYT4qTkWWJA ) had an even sharper political edge. In the film, the Cold War is still raging, albeit with the Eastern bloc in clear ascendency, and the American astronaut for the expedition goes into space against the wishes of his capitalist government. The Japanese crewmember also references Hiroshima and various parts of the film dredge up America’s use of nuclear weapons on Japan. Interestingly, the film did have a US release, retitled as *The First Spaceship on Venus*, albeit Crown Picture’s cut of the film deleted all of this political critique and that was the version [ruthlessly mocked]( http://mst3k.wikia.com/wiki/First_Spaceship_on_Venus) by MST3K. \n\nBoth *The Astronauts* and *Andromeda* feature as their central plot the tale of a peaceful communist spaceship travelling to a distant worlds. While travelling from utopia to utopia did not always make for high drama, the trip itself could provide commentary about politics as well as serve a hard SF pedagogical function. The 1963 Czechoslovakian SF film *Ikarie XB 1* features just such an expedition of peaceful exploration and colonization, but has a horrifying [interlude](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyraLxGHgzo) onboard a derelict Western spacecraft. The *Ikarie*’s AI tells the cosmonauts that the ship dated from the 1980s when capitalism went into its terminal crisis. A group of wealthy capitalists, complete with cocktail dresses and tuxedos, left earth with their riches rather than bow to the inevitable triumph of the proletariat. Although the nationality is unstated, the use of English signs on the ship and the American military uniforms clearly signal this is a US vessel. Unfortunately, the ship’s passengers and crew were killed by an experimental nerve agent, Tigger Fun, when the capitalists turned on each other.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/uohaja/the_cold_war_often_focuses_on_the_conflict/ | uohaja | 3 | t3_uohaja | The Cold War often focuses on the conflict between the US and USSR as a fight between capitalism and communism. However, China was also developing as a strong communist nation this time. Why is it often left out of the conversation/left out of the conflict? | Especially curious about this because some of the most notable cold war conflicts, such as the Vietnam and Korean Wars, happened in China’s backyard. And today, China has been left out of the conflict.
Another thing that’s interesting is that China, despite known for its tech development, did not focus on developing the same nuclear fire power as the US and USSR have. Why did China not follow suit in the Cold War era? | 7 | 0.78 | null | false | 1,652,408,017 | [
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"body": "We can't answer why some people leave it out of some conversations. It's definitely present in anything that tries to be a comprehensive discussion of the Cold War — the \"losing of China\" was an important Cold War event, as was the Korean and Vietnam Wars, both of which had strong involvements by China.\n\nChina's place in the Cold War was complicated. They were initially very close to the Soviet camp, but in the 1960s they broke away from them (the \"Sino-Soviet split\") and became officially Non-Aligned. This puts them into a different category from the superpowers by definition, and lumps them with other non-aligned nations like India, Yugoslavia, Ghana, Egypt, and so on. Many popular histories of the Cold War ignore _all_ other blocs beyond the US and Soviet Union, which is a major error and much ink has been spilled by Cold War historians to try and reconsider the ways in which non-superpowers exerted considerable influence on the direction of the Cold War (and upon the actions of superpowers). A classic text in this vein is John Lewis Gaddis's _The Cold War: A New History_. \n\nAnyway, there is much that can be said about China and the Cold War, but they did not position themselves as a \"third superpower,\" and telling a version of the Cold War that was just about the US, USSR, and China would be committing its own omissions (again, of places like India, or even European states that were ostensibly aligned with the US but certainly had their own agendas as well). \n\nIn terms of China's nuclear arsenal, they started a nuclear weapons program in the mid 1950s after the Eisenhower administration threatened to nuke them over the Taiwan Strait Crisis. They were able to develop warheads fairly quickly, but it took some time for them to develop weapons that had intercontinental range — their initial forces were only able to strike targets relatively close to them, and so either worked as a deterrent against the USSR (who were not their friends by this point) or as a form of extended deterrence against the USA (e.g., threaten US allies — like Japan — as a way to threaten the US by proxy). China only deployed true ICBMs in the 1980s. \n\nThe approach they used is what is sometimes called the Minimum Means of Deterrence, which emphasizes having only enough weapons to make an enemy think that it is not worth starting a nuclear war with you. For them that was, apparently, around 200-300 deployed weapons. That is a number that is low-enough that it would never make the US or Soviet Union think that China was in a position to try and execute a first-strike attack (they would never be able to destroy the thousands of weapons of the US or USSR before they were retaliated against), but it is enough to still create unacceptable harm in both countries (losing even 20-30 cities would be ruinous). As for why China took this approach and not the more maximalist one, I don't know if we really know the \"true\" answer. It appears to have been partially strategic (such a stance is avoids certain kinds of brinksmanship, and is inherently defensive), partially economic (nuclear weapons systems are huge drains on the economy, and during the late Cold War China was busy building a booming economy), partially ideological (they may have seen themselves as being more enlightened than the Superpowers), partially propaganda (they may have wanted to look, for both domestic and foreign propaganda purposes, like they were not participating in the arms race, and they consistently argued that theirs was only a defensive capability). \n\nIn any event, they appear to be changing their approach now, possibly because advances in US and Russian capabilities mean that the smaller Chinese nuclear arsenal is itself vulnerable to a first-strike attack (the US could potentially imagine destroying all or most of their forces in the future, and shooting down what did get off the ground), and so they are apparently expanding their arsenal considerably (to judge by the missile fields under construction).\n\nAnyway, it is very difficult to know whether there are hidden, internal reasons for why various policies were taken in China around their nuclear program, because a) they don't say all that much about why they do what they do, and b) a lot of what they do say about it is hard to distinguish from propaganda. But if you are interested in what we know about the Chinese approach to the Minimal Means of Deterrence, Jeffrey Lewis' _The Minimal Means of Reprisal_ is a very useful monograph, as his monograph _Paper Tigers: China's Nuclear Posture_. For a detailed coverage of the Chinese nuclear program in its early days, the classic text is Lewis and Xue, _China Builds the Bomb_.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tao9jq/is_this_how_the_cold_war_felt_or_was_the_feeling/ | tao9jq | 5 | t3_tao9jq | Is this how the Cold War felt? Or was the feeling of impending doom more/less real? | 19 | 0.67 | null | false | 1,646,879,347 | [
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"body": "I will refrain from giving anecdotes (yes I am that old, but they would all be from childhood). But I would say the answer is no. \n\nThere are a few reasons for this.\n\nOne is that, whatever Putin or anyone else might say, Russia in 2021 is not even like the USSR in 1991, which was the third-biggest country by population (around 290 million), just after China and India, and which was a military superpower. The Soviet economy (very roughly speaking), was about a third the size of the US. Much, much smaller than its military weight should have been, and around Malaysia or Argentina size on a per-capita basis, but still big enough given the size of the population. In comparison, Russia now has around 145 million people (only half of the Soviet population lived in Russia, the population declined in the 1990s and then was pretty much level since), while the US has 330 million people, more than the entire USSR had in 1990. Before it's economy got destroyed this year, the Russian economy (using PPP as it's the most generous estimate) was about the size of Indonesia's or Germany's, around 4% of the global total (and on a per capita basis still around Malaysia and a bit above Argentina), while in nominal terms it's around eleventh in size (smaller than South Korea and about the size of Brazil), and in per capita terms still around Malaysia and a bit above Argentina, but below Costa Rica and China. \n\nBut back to the military - for the admitted genuine size of the Russian military today, it's not remotely like the Soviet military. Soviet defense spending was something like 15% of its GDP (which by estimates was both absolutely larger and relatively larger that the Russian economy is today), where Russian defense spending is more like 4%. The Soviet military was *massive*, with like 5 million people under arms in 1990 - the Russian military is under a million, and in terms of defense spending and equipment it actually had to build back after the spending and production basically flatlined in the 1990s - a lot of \"new\" Russian hardware are actually weapons designed in the late Soviet period and that had production halted or significantly slowed down after 1991. There were periods when countries like India were buying more Russian military hardware than the Russian military itself.\n\nDeployment-wise the world looked very different. The USSR had a formal defense pact in Central and Eastern Europe - the Warsaw Pact (whose countries also had big militaries and their own defense industries, notably Czechoslovakia). The Soviets had something like 380,000 troops deployed in East Germany, across a fortified line from 240,000 Americans, 73,000 Brits, and 56,000 French troops. And that's not getting into the 120,000 or so East German troops and 500,000 or so West German troops serving at any given time. Heck, the Soviets had 50,000 troops based *in Mongolia* because of tensions with China since 1960.\n\nThe Soviet military stretch was significant, and definitely in the \"superpower\" realm, with friendly regimes providing bases and installations for the Soviets in Cuba, South Yemen, and Vietnam, among other places. These non-Warsaw Pact countries that were socialist states otherwise allied with the USSR also had their own substantial troop deployments, often to support one another: Cuba had some 50,000 troops in Angola and 16,000 in Ethiopia to support pro-Soviet regimes there, and Vietnam had tens of thousands of troops in Cambodia and fighting the Khmer Rouge and other US and Chinese-backed rebels. Likewise Soviet allies supported rebel movements in such places as Guatemala and El Salvador, and were close with a wide variety of socialist-but-not-with-a-communist-party countries like Nicaragua, Algeria, Iraq and Syria. The Soviet Union truly represented a \"bloc\" that had a strong ideological basis and presented an actual challenge to the type of world order championed by the US. \n\nIn comparison, Russia has a much diminished role. It technically is part of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which is a much diminished mutual defense pact - it doesn't even include most of the former Soviet states, and is mostly a Russian-led vehicle, the other members being Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Most of these members actually rely on Russia for a military and security presence, and really only Belarus now is any sort of substantial ally in a material and political sense. Russia has links with countries around the world, it is true, but it's a much diminished presence compared to the US or China, and the only real deployment beyond former Soviet borders is in Syria. \n\nSo that's some of the big differences counting against this comparison - it's simply not a bipolar world with Moscow being the seat of the other pole (Beijing is probably the closest candidate for this in 2022). Russia *does* have nuclear weapons (albeit its stockpile has been reduced by 90% or so since 1990 - it has a few thousand versus tens of thousands), but I would say the scare there is different - nuclear war was an existential scare, but also literally something in a \"Cold War\" armed peace - Europe was at peace, and the general fear was that mutual tensions could start World War III and Armageddon. There is a hot war in Eastern Europe right now, and fears of that using radiological weapons or other WMDs but that's not quite at the level of nuclear global annihilation (and I hope it doesn't get that far). Although it's also worth noting that the Cold War went through hot and cold phases - detente in the 1970s saw peaceful coexistence, a worsening of tensions in the early 1980s led to some near-miss war scares in 1983, but after 1985 tensions drastically decreased and were replaced with diplomatic negotiations. The tensions waxed and waned.\n\nA final point I'd say is that the interconnectivity is just totally different, especially with mobile phones, the internet, and social media. A Cold War hot war in Afghanistan didn't have the same kind of immediate coverage one can get nowadays, with sides having social media presences and videos readily available. Personally I've been texting and calling people in Russia and that would have been just completely unthinkable in 1990 - international calls alone were hard to do, heavily centralized, and heavily monitored. It's just a completely different global ecosystem of information (and disinformation), and communication (which also includes anxiety-producing direct footage of conflicts and social media information silos).",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/uvqjkq/did_the_united_states_of_america_have_the/ | uvqjkq | 3 | t3_uvqjkq | Did the United States of America have the capacity to fully utilize it's peak Cold War (1967) nuclear arsenal? | Inspired by the visualisation here: https://np.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/uvb8yc/oc_number_of_nuclear_warheads_by_country_from/
Specifically the peak of 31,225 warheads in 1967 made me wonder if the US was even capable of deploying enough of them fast enough to substantially deplete that stockpile before the Soviet's retaliated, therefore "justifying" the need to stockpile that many to begin with.
I have a feeling the answer is no, and that this large number is in large part due to the arms race between the two powers, but I would love to know if anyone has numbers on how many they could have actually / theoretically used at any given time. | 6 | 0.81 | null | false | 1,653,274,282 | [
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"body": "There is a difference between the \"warheads produced\" and \"warheads deployed,\" if that is what you are asking. The \"force loadings\" of American weapons were always lower than the total stockpile (and still are). For this reason \"total warheads\" is not the best measure of the relative strengths and capabilities of a country. \n\nThere isn't some kind of authoritative data on force loadings, but there are some estimates, mainly made by the Natural Resources Defense Council in the 1990s. Here are some quick graphs that just give you a sense of it. First, it's worth keeping in mind that a lot of the US weapons in the \"superbloated stockpile\" period were tactical nuclear weapons — \"battlefield nukes\" that were meant to be deployed close to front lines, or used as part of defensive measures (e.g., nuclear-tipped nukes to shoot down nuclear-armed bombers). [Here is the split between those, just so you can see the magnitude of them](https://imgur.com/WzjYN6v). We don't have _great_ estimates over deployed tactical nukes over this period; it usually just gets lumped as a big category like this.\n\nOf the \"strategic\" weapons — ICBMs, SLBMs, bomber-based weapons, etc. — we have estimates as to how those were deployed based on delivery vehicle. Here's [the NRDC's estimates of how those shook out](https://imgur.com/uNv3e9q). There's probably a lot of guesswork here so you can take it with a grain of salt, but it does I think correctly capture the trends and how they varied over time.\n\nIf you take the total warheads _deployed_ in those strategic force loadings, and divide them by the number of total warheads, you get a graph [like this](https://imgur.com/9BJK9zB), which shows you the deployed force as a percentage of the total stockpile. Now for reasons both obvious and subtle, this is not totally accurate — there are mismatches in the numbers in some places, clearly, hence the >100% deployment in the early 1990s. This is just an artifact of two datasets that are not totally coordinated being combined. More subtly, I am not sure whether one could count more than a handful of the weapons prior to the Eisenhower administration as \"deployed,\" though the NDRC do. This is because this was during [the custody dispute](http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/01/30/the-custody-dispute-over-the-bomb/), in which the nuclear cores were not in the possession of the military but kept in Atomic Energy Commission hands. So again, take this with a grain of salt. But you can see that however rough these estimates, the percentage deployed has varied quite a bit, and during the \"bloat\" periods quite a lot were not deployed.\n\nWhy wouldn't one deploy them all? Because there was both a practical and strategic advantage to having \"reserves.\" The practical advantage was that you could swap warheads in and out as you saw fit without waiting to make more, and sometimes there were times in which they found that a given variant of warhead was unreliable or unsafe and needed to be replaced very fast. (For example, one model of B28 nuclear bomb was found to not meet the standards of safety in 1962, and so was eventually replaced, which was probably a good thing since those weapons were involved in an accident in Spain in 1966.) \n\nThe strategic reason is that if you launched everything you had in one big \"wargasm,\" then your enemy had no incentive to possibly hold anything back of their own. Whereas if you kept a reserve, you could say, \"look, I could keep destroying you, so maybe we could stop this before that happens?\" Now this sort of thing was probably pure fantasy, but did occasionally play a role in how the US thought about its stockpile.\n\nAnyway, to really look at your question of \"how many could have been used\" in a deeper way, one has to do something like an \"order of battle,\" which requires looking very closely at the deployed forces at any given point in history. This is difficult to do, but has at times been done. Stan Norris, whose work I respect a lot, [has done this for all sides of the Cuban Missile Crisis](https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/event/2012_10_24_Norris_Cuban_Missile_Crisis_Nuclear_Order_of_Battle.pdf), as a way to get a very concrete sense of what nuclear war would have looked like in October 1962. As you will appreciate one needs to get very \"fine-grained\" about this sort of thing. \n\nTo your question of whether the large stockpile was motivated by a desire for a \"first-strike capability\" (knock out all of their nukes first), that was always a US dream but by the 1960s that began to feel very unlikely. But there was always a hope that you could catch a lot of them \"on the ground,\" and thus reduce the number that hit you, so there was definitely an attempt at a one-to-one-and-then-some matchup. The large stockpiles were also motivated by a fear (of varying levels of plausibility) that the Soviets might somehow, through incredibly ingeniousness and luck, try to catch the US nukes \"on the ground\" and cripple the US before it could launch an attack on them, and so having a lot of nukes was seen as a hedge against that, even in the years in which the US stockpile dwarfed the Soviet one. \n\nThe relative numbers of the warheads and missiles also should not be seen as just purely rational deployments meeting a particular end. For many of those years, they were just churning out as many warheads as they could, because that made them feel safer and because there was very little real oversight into the program. Some of those big drops one sees starting in the 1960s were in part because the White House began to take a more central role in planning and started to coordinate the nuclear war plans between the services (via the SIOP and other bureaucratic mechanisms), and the effect on the \"bloat\" is really apparent. So there are internal reasons for these numbers, too. You can say very similar things about the Soviet warheads too, as an aside (most of theirs in the \"bloat\" periods were tactical weapons). \n\nThe data from the above graphs comes from [here](https://web.archive.org/web/20140328171045/http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datainx.asp), a now-archived website of nuclear data estimates by the aforementioned NRDC. These estimates need to be taken with an appropriate dash of salt given their inherently uncertain nature, but they are not totally made up (they are based on various declassified statements and estimates that are then analyzed by people in the open-source world). I apologize for the rough-and-tumble nature of the Excel graphs, which were hastily thrown together based on some previous graphs I have made of the data.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/unzbxb/where_did_western_europe_buy_resources_during_the/ | unzbxb | 2 | t3_unzbxb | Where did Western Europe buy resources during the Cold War? | There is a lot of talk about Western Europe's dependence on Russian gas, coal and oil. I wonder where Western Europe bought these resources during the Cold War. Somebody knows? | 19 | 0.92 | null | false | 1,652,356,513 | [
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"body": "You might be interested in this [answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ue5x5z/when_did_western_europe_become_reliant_on_russian/i6lux69/) I wrote a couple weeks ago about the development of the Soviet oil and gas industry, and how the European export market for Soviet oil and gas developed.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tgjukq/currency_in_berlin_during_the_cold_war/ | tgjukq | 6 | t3_tgjukq | Currency in berlin during the cold war? | What was the currency used in berlin during the cold war ? Was it the deustche mark or the ostmark ? I know that in 1948, the municipal coucil in berlin refused the citywide use of the ostmark but I can’t find what happened next on the internet ?
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"body": "Starting in 1949 Berlin was split not just between occupying powers, but between two states. The western half became part of the Federal Republic of Germany (aka West Germany) with the establishment of that state in May 1949, while the eastern half became part of the German Democratic Republic (aka East Germany) with the establishment of that state in October 1949. The currency in Berlin would depend on what side of the city you were on, and initially both sides of the city did accept both currencies, with harder divides coming with the establishment of the Berlin Wall in 1961.\n\nPrior to that there was much more of a free flow of people between both sides of the city, with citizens of each side working, and more importantly shopping, on the other side. Payment would occur in the currency of the employer with there being a preference among citizens for the internationally accepted Westmark. Additionally citizens of both sides had incentives to shop on the other side, with East Berliners going West for luxury goods and West Berliners going East for heavily subsidized food. After the closure of free movement in 1961 both marks were more solidified in their respective areas as the Westmark became harder to obtain by average citizens in the East. \n\nIt is an important side note that the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) sought Westmarks as they were far more internationally accepted than Ostmarks were, and they served as a hard currency that the state could use in international trade. This was, however, not something that the state encouraged of its citizens. While citizens of the GDR did have access to Westmarks through travel to the West, and family connections, the state did monetarily try to limit the influence of the Westmark.\n\nThis was first done in 1957 when GDR authorities announced that all Ostmarks printed after 1948 were now being replaced with new Ostmarks. This action allowed for East German citizens to exchange their old Ostmarks for new ones, but the old Ostmarks held by West German, and West Berlin, businesses and authorities were functionally worthless after that. The reform served to internally bolster the Ostmark, while discouraging trade for Ostmarks on the part of Western businesses. It is important to note that outside of Eastern Bloc countries the Ostmark had no real international value prior to the international recognition of the GDR in 1971.\n\nIn sum, from 1948 to 1957 both marks freely moved throughout Berlin and were used in both sides of the city. After 1957 the movement of Ostmarks was more limited, and after 1961 it became more difficult for East Germans to obtain Westmarks, while non-internationally accepted Ostmarks became far less valuable to Western businesses with little movement of people from East to West on a daily basis. The establishment of the Berlin Wall kept this in place through 1989.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/spzid2/cold_war_under_what_circumstances_did_the_soviet/ | spzid2 | 4 | t3_spzid2 | Cold war. Under what circumstances did the Soviet Union consider an invasion of Western Europe or initiating a nuclear exchange? What were their 'red lines' | Most scenarios regarding the cold war turning hot generally focus on a Soviet initiation of hostilities and then likely Western responses. What I have never seen clearly articulated is what situations would have made the Soviet Union consider war worthwhile or desirable?
Was it a certain estimated advantage? A stumbling escalation of crisis requiring drastic action ? Estimating that the balance of strength was slipping away?
Other than outright hostility from Nato, What would have caused the Soviet Union to go to war? Did they know? Did they have policies and protocols? | 26 | 0.8 | null | false | 1,644,586,308 | [
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"body": "This is almost a hypothetical question. Historically the Soviet Union did not invade Western Europe and did not initiate a nuclear exchange. So you are basically asking what circumstances (which by definition did not arise) would have caused them to launch those attacks (which they did not launch).\n\nThe declared position of the Soviet Union was that it would not attack first. Sources available to historians do not contradict this, with the possible exception until about 1980 that the Soviets might have launched a strategic nuclear attack if they had evidence the United States was about to launch such an attack (preemption). The Soviet Union officially announced a \"no first use of nuclear weapons\" policy in 1982. (The United States has never had such a policy.)\n\nThat said, Soviet operational plans in both instances would have been offensive in orientation. Because there was no practical defensive response to a strategic nuclear attack, the response would have been what the Soviets called a \"retaliatory-meeting strike\" consisting of launching their missiles. And the Soviet operational plans for fighting in Europe were offensive in nature (fast-moving mechanized offensive into NATO territory) because the Soviets strongly believed that offense was the stronger form of warfare and might bring any war to a quick, favorable conclusion, whereas standing on the defensive would not.\n\n I find particularly informative the [notes and transcripts](https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb285/) from a series of interviews of American and Soviet officials conducted during and just after the collapse of the Soviet Union. These suggest the following points relevant to your question:\n\n1. The Soviet leadership believed nuclear war was not winnable under any circumstances. Some Soviet leaders, including Brezhnev, were personally very anxious about nuclear war.\n2. Soviet strategic nuclear weapons procurement was driven by competition with and fear of the American nuclear arsenal. They did not want the Americans to get ahead but they also were not planning to attack. (We can see here that neither side was planning to attack but feared the other was.)\n3. The Soviets did not believe nuclear escalation could be managed and therefore did not believe there was a meaningful distinction between tactical, theater, and strategic nuclear warfare.\n4. Likewise the Soviets did not believe a conventional war in Europe was likely to be contained. They thought their prospects in such a war were better if nuclear and chemical weapons were not used but were pessimistic about this.\n\nThinking now about the canon of Western texts speculating on WWIII, we can see that they do not align with what the Soviets later said they were thinking. If we are to believe them, the Soviets were not going to attack because the correlation of forces favored them or because they felt they were on the verge of losing some advantage. Although the idea of launching an attack on Western Europe to maintain control of Eastern Europe (in the face of, say, democratic revolts or economy-driven unrest) is prominent in English-language \"war scare\" literature of the 1970s-80s, in fact a situation similar to that transpired in late 1980s with no war. It turned out the Soviet leadership was more willing to lose Eastern Europe than go to war. Neither do the Soviets seem to have had any inclination to participate in the escalation of a third world crisis to WWIII.\n\nUltimately, it's impossible to know what might have happened in different scenarios, but what the Soviets actually did when things did happen and what they said they would do both suggest they had no plan or policy of attacking.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/sy4xfs/i_have_studied_years_ago_that_in_the_treaty_that/ | sy4xfs | 6 | t3_sy4xfs | I have studied years ago that in the treaty that ended cold war they signed that Otan would not expand "a centimeter" to east. Yet, I have not found any treaty signed. When Cold War ended, there was some kind of treaty between Russia and US or was unilateral from the Soviet Union? | Thanks | 6 | 0.81 | null | false | 1,645,478,719 | [
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"body": "Firstly, there was no treaty that ended the Cold War. There were a series of agreements as well as geopolitical developments that signaled the end of the Cold War, but no overarching treaty. Now where the \"not one inch\" comes up is in the negotiations for the unification of Germany. \n\nBy 1989, it was becoming increasingly clear to all concerned that German unification was in the cards and the West German government was going to take the lead in a future German government. German unification would coincide with a formal end of the Second World War and a final peace treaty. The Soviets maintained a large armed force within Germany as part of its occupation rights as one of the four victorious Allied powers. In the weeks after the opening of the Wall and the political implosion of the GDR, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his somewhat independent Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher were making aggressive overtures for German unification. Part of the West Germans' playbook was intimating that unified Germany would be neutral and either withdraw from NATO or not integrated into it like France. This caused considerable alarm in Paris, London, and Washington. For one thing, it would be a *de facto* end to the NATO alliance while Warsaw Pact and the USSR still existed. Among Western European leaders there still was a fear that a resurgent Germany would fall back into its old habits of militarism as it would need to plan for its own defense. One of the unstated political rationales for NATO was that it harnessed Germany into a collective structure that restricted its supposedly innate militarism that led to two world wars. The old canard of NATO was that it was to keep the Soviets out, the US in, and the Germans down. \n\nThis was the context of US Secretary of State James Baker's 9 Feburary 1990 meeting with Gorbachev where he floated the idea of not moving NATO \"one inch\" beyond Germany. Baker pushed Gorbachev into a hypothetical that *if* there were such a guarantee, would the Soviet leader drop his opposition to a unified Germany being a NATO member. Gorbachev did not make any firm commitment here, but in the subsequent weeks would continue to press the idea that unified Germany should be neutral.\n\nBaker's idea did not have formal approval from Washington. He was on the tail-end of an extensive tour and Bush was apparently quite upset that he was floating an idea that restricted NATO's development. But events overtook the question of NATO as Kohl, right after the Baker meeting, was able to get Gorbachev to publicly assent to Germans' right to self-determination. Gorbachev subsequently floundered over the issue and future NATO membership became tabled. The Western Allies managed to persuade Kohl to make NATO membership a non-negotiable part of unification, something Kohl was predisposed for anyways, and the negotiations were focused on *how* the former GDR would be integrated into NATO. The subsequent 2+4 agreement that unified Germany had provisions limiting the *initial* deployment of NATO military forces into the former East Germany. Initially, only German territorial units (the equivalent of the US National Guard and not directly integrated into NATO) could deploy in East Germany while the Soviets maintained their ground forces were present. The regular Bundeswehr could move into these areas after the withdrawal was complete and NATO forces could operate there with the assent of the German government. The Germans also agreed to formally denuclearize the area and pay a substantial portion of costs of maintaining and withdrawing the Soviet forces in Germany. \n\nYeltsin and subsequent Russian leaders would maintain that the 2+4 agreement precluded NATO's eastern expansion. Only a very generous reading of the treaty allowed for this; one could see that the *spirit* of the agreement meant this was a sensitive issue and there was a strong sense that the West was dancing on the grave of the Soviet Union. While Baker and Bush were cautious about NATO expansion, others within American decision-making were more blatant. The *National Security Revitalization Act* of the Congressional Republicans' Contract with America stated that Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia should be permitted to join NATO in the near future and \n\n>that any other European country emerging from communist domination should be invited to become a full member of NATO, provided it meets such standards and commitments.\n\nUnlike the 1990 negotiations over Germany, the Russians did not have much of a diplomatic presence in talks over NATO enlargement. \n\nThe \"not one inch\" pledge has taken on mythic proportions, particularly within Russia. But it was not a formal pledge, but a negotiating point floated by a very high-placed US official. More importantly, Gorbachev did not take Baker up on this pledge and transform a hypothetical point into a concession. Instead, Gorbachev insisted on what was a dead-letter, a neutral Germany, and as events overtook the Soviets, sought what he felt were better concessions than limiting NATO. Gorbachev's foreign policy advisor Anatoly Chernyaev argued that nuclear security was more important than NATO:\n\n>Real security of the USSR did not depend on the amount of forces in the West and in the East, and their [conventional] armaments.\n\nSince neither Germany or even Poland had nuclear arsenals, getting pledges to denuclearize Germany was seen at the time as an important concession. \n\nBut to reiterate, there was no formal pledge to not expand NATO. The Soviets did not demand it and they could have. They did place demands that at the time seemed quite stringent such as denuclearization, staged German expansion into the GDR, and paying the Soviets to leave. And the West did comply, even when the Soviets balked at some of their end of the deal such as demanding an upfront payment rather than a staged one agreed upon. Part of the sourness over subsequent trajectory of the post-2+4 world was due to the fact Gorbachev had a bad hand in 1990 and he played it poorly.\n\n*Sources*\n\nSarotte, M. E. *Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate*. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022. \n\nSpohr, Kristina. *Post Wall, Post Square: How Bush, Gorbachev, Kohl, and Deng Shaped the World After 1989*. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/qfej74/i_have_heard_it_said_that_by_1943_ish_the_allies/ | qfej74 | 10 | t3_qfej74 | I have heard it said that by 1943 (ish), the Allies had effectively won WW2. Was there a similar point in time for the Cold War? Or did the Cold War end more abruptly / unexpectedly in 1989? | As stated in the question, I am interested in learning when the Cold War was 'effectively' won. Did either or both parties recognize that the war had been won / lost?
What were the events major turning points that signaled that the US had won? | 47 | 0.87 | null | false | 1,635,160,877 | [
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"body": "This runs into a few fairly common issues in pop-history and how history is often presented and interpreted that I think are interesting to talk about.\n\nNamely this idea of inevitability: in the case of WW2 1943, and particularly the victory at Stalingrad are typically cited as the turning point of the war and that from this point onwards, as you say, the war was \"effectively won\" by the Allies. The reasons for this are simple: the Axis had lost the strategic initiative and the cost of changing the tide would be increasingly costly while the ability to pay any cost would be diminishing. It is in this regard that their defeat seems \"inevitable\" or that the allies had \"effectively won\". But this is a bit of what we might call \"historical determinism\", the idea that the final outcome of history is basically predetermined. The essential flaw with this outlook is that it robs all actors of their agency. While unlikely (and I should emphasize that it is very unlikely), it certainly was still possible for the Axis to have won or in the very least to have gotten a negotiated peace in WW2. It would have taken a degree of brilliance on the part of the axis and incompetence on the part of the allies but it certainly was a possibility.\n\nI say all this to preface and say that determining that a conflict was \"effectively won\" or \"effectively over\" is an assertion that can really only ever be made with the benefit of hindsight, and even then I'd argue it does warrant some qualifiers. With all that said I would say that the safest time to cite as the \"effective victory\" of the cold war would have been about 1988/89.\n\nLet me explain: From the late 60's onwards the USSR would increasingly lag behind the United States economically. The reasons for this are numerous and complex and I'd point you u/Kochevnik81's [answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/q02f35/comment/hf5nwbj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) for a more detailed breakdown of the Soviet economy towards the end of the cold-war. But the important thing here is that the USSR, while lagging further and further behind the US economically was not in danger of imminent collapse until very, very late in the game. While there were many cracks showing in the soviet system there were also many part parts of the foundation that were strong (or at least: appeared to be). Had Gorbachev not come along it would not be hard to imagine the USSR middling along for several more decades, but alas he did. Gorbachev's reforms had a two-pronged effect for destabilizing the eastern bloc.\n\nFirstly: Glasnost, a policy of increasing openness which allowed for more transparency and more frank discussion (and criticism) of the Soviet system. This effectively made it easier for people to protest and organize against the eastern bloc governments (even in eastern bloc countries where this policy was not official, this soviet policy emboldened many in the eastern bloc). Couple this with Gorbachev's greater unwillingness to use force to quash public opposition (not wanting a repeat of 1956 or 1968) in the eastern bloc and domestically meant that movements to break away from the USSR would have a much higher chance to succeed.\n\nSecondly: Perestroika, which was an attempt to reform the lagging Soviet economy. This push for reform was needed for the long-term stability of the USSR but the reforms themselves were less than successful. Boiling down a massive and complicated topic to the basics for this: Perestroika effectively dismantled/destabilized the ailing economic systems of the USSR but did not effectively replace them with better (or even equally good) systems. This caused the economy of the USSR to start to tank which naturally had a ripple effect on the economies of the eastern bloc.\n\nSo what we've got here in the late 80's in the east is a quickly deteriorating economic situation and an increasing ability to criticize, protest, and organize against the government. These are prime conditions for counterrevolutions. But note that though these policies began in 1986 and 1985 respectively, I don't list the \"effective victory\" as happening until 1988/89, the years of the eastern bloc revolutions. And this reason for this harkens back to what I said earlier about inevitability. While Glasnost and Perestroika ultimately caused the collapse of the eastern bloc, had they been done differently they just as easily could have saved it. China is a functioning example of a communist state preserving itself through reform (not only preservation but making it stronger than ever) and it was certainly possible for glasnost and perestroika to have done this for the USSR... if the policies and programs themselves were better. While the eastern bloc lagged in many ways it still had the power and organization to potentially rejuvenate itself, and while this would be difficult it was certainly not an impossibility (once again: see modern China).\n\nBut the reality is that the reforms weren't better and would help to wither away the states of the east. While admirable in their goals their implementation was ultimately incredibly flawed. Thus only when the issues with the communist system came to a head in 1988 and the eastern bloc governments began to collapse would I say the West had \"effectively\" won. The USSR had started to actively lose ground it had held since the beginning of the conflict and regaining that ground would become increasingly costly while simultaneously the USSR would be increasingly unable to afford any costs at all. The Cold War was declared over at the Malta Summit in 1989, and would completely end with the collapse of the USSR in 1991. It might be a lame answer but I really couldn't comfortable say the Cold War was \"effectively over\" earlier than 1988.\n\nHope this answers your question and perhaps more importantly: gives a bit of insight into how we view history itself.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/mre85u/in_marty_robbins_anticommunist_song_aint_i_right/ | mre85u | 22 | t3_mre85u | In Marty Robbins' anti-communist song "Ain't I right" the singer tells a short story of a person coming to a southern town "to show the folks a brand new way of life". Were there left-wing activists in the Cold War that traveled in the US to promote left wing ideologies? | The lyrics that made me ask this question:
"You came down to this southern town last summer
To show the folks a brand new way of life
But all you’ve shown the folks around here is trouble"
Does Robbins refer to activists coming to rural towns and promoting left-wing ideas? Did these people exist and did they have an impact on the public opinion? | 240 | 0.93 | null | false | 1,618,491,868 | [
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"body": "There were Southerners promoting leftist ideas long before the Cold War Era, like the \"Bloody Harlan\" strikes in Kentucky, the \"Mine Wars\" in West Virginia, The Loray Mill Strike in North Carolina, and the Alabama Communist Party in the 30s.\n\nEarlier in the 20th century Kentucky folksinger and labor organizer \"Aunt\" Molly Jackson sang:\n\n\"I was raised in Kentucky, / Kentucky born and bred, / but when I Joined the Union / they called me a Russian Red\".\n\nIf I may I'd like to link [a previous answer of mine](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/f0eo59/harlan_county_ky/fgtvr9b?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) with additional sources about these pro-Union protest songs from Harlan County, Kentucky which used traditional Appalachian music and lived experience to develop class-conscious critiques of the coal mining system. Many of them include notions of racial equality similar to what other commentors have mentioned regarding the Civil Rights movement.\n\nSee also:\n\nKELLEY, ROBIN D. G. *Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression*. Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition ed., University of North Carolina Press, 2015.\n\nRomalis, Shelly. Pistol Packin' Mama: Aunt Molly Jackson and the Politics of Folksong. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999. Print.",
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"body": "Though I'm not an expert on Robbins specifically, the song came out in 1966 so we can get a sense of what he was likely referring to by looking at what was going on in the South around that time. \n\nWhat was going on was the Civil Rights movement. 1966 is after the passage of the landmark [Civil Rights Act of 1964](https://guides.ll.georgetown.edu/c.php?g=592919&p=4172702) which banned, among other things, discrimination in employment and schools on the basis of race, banned discriminatory application of voting registration rules, and discrimination in places of public accommodation. This was one of, if not the, biggest single actions to undermine Jim Crow and open racial segregation in the United States. \n\nThe \"brand new way of life\" Robbins was referring to was likely a way of life where the South could no longer force black people to sit at the back of the bus, couldn't force them to use worse drinking fountains and accommodations, and had to either educate their children in integrated schools or (as some chose to) close down public schooling altogether. As you can imagine, a culture that is centered around explicit white supremacy is greatly disrupted when it can no longer legally be so open about its discrimination. And, as you can imagine, the passage (and often enforcement) of federal anti-discrimination laws was pushed by people who were opposed to the system in place in the Jim Crow South who tended to not be southerners (or, at least, respected southerners). [As an interesting aside, the famously racist Alabama Governor George Wallace got his start as a civil rights lawyer helping black people. It was after he saw that opposing black people's rights is the single most important political position in the South that he became so rabid].\n\nSo that's the \"way of life\" that is new and which the south considered to be trouble - one where they had to at least pretend to treat black people somewhat equal to white people. \n\nAs to your question about left-wing activists traveling to the South to promote left-wing ideologies, the answer there is 'sort of, depending on how you define things'. The ideology that was being pushed onto the South was of racial equality. As to the traveling promoters of the idea, the most likely reference there is to the (very visible at the time) [Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee](https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/student-nonviolent-coordinating-committee-sncc). These were largely younger, educated kids from northern universities who first rose to attention by participating in the Freedom Rides in 1961 where integrated buses came to the South following the Supreme Court decision desegrating interstate travel. They were met with violence, public opposition, but also cameras and reporters, publicizing the struggle. The late Congressman John Lewis (a true American hero in my opinion, and a person whose presence stayed with anyone who'd ever met him) was part of the SNCC and you might be familiar with some of their work from the discussions of his contributions after his passing last year.\n\nThe SNCC continued to be involved in the South including by running black voter registration drives throughout the rural South, and challenged existing political party structures, upending the status quo which had existed. It led marches throughout the South, including in Selma Alabama, and it helped organize quite a few black organizations including one which would become the Black Panther party. \n\nThe SNCC also had the same tensions as the larger civil rights movement between the non-violent integrationist wing and a more militant one, with those tensions being resolved in favor of the latter in the summer of 1966 with the election of Stokely Carmichael to SNCC leadership.\n\nSo that's the background to what was going on when Robbins put out this song in 1966. It was after more than half a decade of very public, escalating conflict in the south between civil rights activists and defenders of the Jim Crow status quo. The conflict seemed to only be getting worse and I could imagine some skeptical folks would have looked at an SNCC which started out preaching nonviolence and integration but by 1966 was striking out into a more militant direction as the logical culmination of the civil rights movement. Charitably construed, Robbins' message may have been that the left-wing Northerners who stirred up black people in the rural South and preached integration and an end to discrimination talked about how it would help things but, by 1966, the changes had caused division (as whites committed to segregation refused to give it up) rather than increased harmony. The activists referred to were most likely the SNCC and those like them.\n\nAs to your final question on - did these activists have an impact on the public opinion - the answer is again 'sort of, depending on what you consider 'public opinion' and 'impact'. They upended the established Southern system of discrimination and challenged white supremacy where no credible challenges seemed to exist before. That had a huge impact. It had an impact on the white people who supported white supremacy (if you asked them, probably a very negative impact) and on those who were opposed to it. If you're asking if they changed people's minds to be more left-wing - yes they did, but not the minds of most southern whites. The freedom rides drew attention from people who were more or less 'on the sidelines' of civil rights. Northern whites who didn't really care about what happened in the South, or who vaguely supported it on the mythology that it was for the best, were disabused of their notions by the extreme violence meted out against even white university students who were following the law. *That*, in turn, led to the changing opinions of 'neutral' whites, as well as hope for those (white and black) who were fighting against discrimination. However, public opinion of whites in the South was not immediately changed by the rides, as can be seen by the extreme opposition to integration throughout the South. If anything, it hardened against change as that change was forced from the federal level.\n\nI fear that's a too-condensed summary, but it's hard to talk about that time in the US without all the nuance leading to a treatise. Hopefully that gives you some areas to look at further.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rn8nee/during_the_cold_war_when_the_soviet_union_started/ | rn8nee | 5 | t3_rn8nee | During the Cold War, when the Soviet Union started expanding its influence. Why didn't it target India and try and install a pro-soviet government or just make it an ally since it was already often trading with the Soviet Union? | I fail to see what disadvantages there are to not do it when looking at India's geographical location, economic potential, population, and many Indians are still traumatized from Western colonization making the task far easier. | 17 | 0.88 | null | false | 1,640,302,988 | [
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"body": "The USSR didn't need to install a pro-Soviet government in India or make India an ally because for all intents and purposes it *had* a relatively pro-Soviet government and ally in India. \n\nFrom 1962 to the end of the Cold War, the USSR was by far the biggest arms exporter to India (replacing the UK - US arms imports were practically nonexistent until the 21st century), and in turn India was one of, if not the, biggest Soviet arms importer outside of the Warsaw Pact. This was a convenient strategic balance at a time when Sino-Soviet relations worsened, and India was a strategic counterweight to China from the Soviet perspective. On top of this, India had a fairly large Communist Party (which is still around) that won state elections and ran the state government of Kerala, was the opposition party nationally in the 1950s, and supported Indira Gandhi in the 1970s. \n\nBasically the USSR already had everything it could want from India (and imported lots of Indian films for Soviet consumption, by the way). India was a major player in the Non-Aligned Movement as well, so the USSR having close ties with the existing Indian government gave it credibility in the post-colonial world that it would not have if it engineered an overthrow of the existing government and replaced it with a Soviet puppet regime. \n\nInstalling an Indian Soviet Socialist Republic or what have you would also have provided very little tangible benefits and vastly increased Soviet liabilities, and in a country physically separated from the USSR, and with a very large development gap compared to the USSR or Eastern Bloc. \n\nHistoric arms import and export figures can be found at the SIPRI [database](https://armstrade.sipri.org/armstrade/html/export_values.php).",
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"body": "Very short answer is: the Soviets didn't have the muscle to \"install a pro-Soviet govt\" in India. In fact, it would have been so far-fetched that it was never even considered in Moscow. India is a pretty big country to just swallow.\n\nAs for an alliance, while India leaned toward the Soviets from time to time, it's commitment to Nonalignment policy and its economic and ideological dependence on the US was too high for it to go all-out with Moscow.\n\nLong answer: the Soviets had an eye on India as a potential theatre for revolution since the early 1920s. The founder of Communist Party of India, MN Roy was trained by the Soviets, a key figure in Comintern and close to the Politburo. However, during this period most of Soviet Asian program was focused on China, where they were first supporting Kuomintang and then battling it. India always remained the \"next\" destination. \n\nAfter the Second World War and Indian independence in 1947, the power passed onto Nationalist Congress which had plenty of leaders with antipathy towards communism. Stalin denounced Congress as a Western stooge. Yet, despite this hostility, when Communist uprising started in Indian province of Telengana in 1948, Stalin didn't offer it too much support. He was too busy with Eastern Europe at the time. Congress govt successfully repressed the uprising through military means.\n\nAfter Stalin's death, Moscow began to moderate its tone. They saw Nehru's Nonalignment as advantageous from their perspective for it kept large chunks of the Third World out of Western orbit. Soviets began to give India some aid although it is important to note that the Americans gave India far more in aid and thus were always an important factor in New Delhi's calculations. This shift in Soviet approach also meant tacit acceptance that India wasn't ripe for Communist takeover yet and the Indian Communists were left on their own. When another Communist uprising happened in Indian province of West Bengal in 1968, Moscow wasn't too interested.\n\nBy now there were new geopolitical reasons to be friendly with each other. After the India-China war of 1962 and Sino-Soviet border conflict in 1969, both India and USSR wanted to be close to each other to maintain some pressure on China. Also, as Washington drew closer to Pakistan under Nixon, New Delhi leaned towards the Soviets as a way to balance it. Before the 1971 India-Pakistan War, India and USSR signed a treaty of friendship (not an alliance). Both Moscow and New Delhi wanted to keep each other at an arm's length. Moscow didn't want to get dragged into India's War and New Delhi didn't want to antagonize the Amerocans any further.\n\nBut the situation was quickly corrected. Under Carter, India and the US reset their relationship. After that things were relatively unremarkable until the end of the Cold War. India sort of maintained a balanced approach towards both superpowers, all the while developing closer trade ties with both. Indians maintained good relationship with the Soviets because of historical reasons and to keep the Americans honest. But they also needed to keep Washington in good humor lest it turns completely towards Pakistan (this is when US and Pak are allied in the Afghan War).",
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"body": ">when the Soviet Union started expanding its influence. Why didn't it target India and try and install a pro-soviet\n\nThis question can be answered in many ways .\n firstly it is important to remember that people who fought for independence of India was mostly British educated people. So they had exposure to tradition of liberalism. These people who fought for independence shaped the post - independence india. Like first prime minister of Nehru. Nehru was heavily influenced by Fabian socialism. On the other hand Gandhi influenced by cosmopolitan thoughts. So notion of communism wasn't a part of Mainstream political thinking. There was some scholars and freedom fighters like M .N Roy and ram manohar lohia who was influenced by Communism but in their work they have made many alterations in communism for the Indian context. \nSo communism as an ideology was never really present in political sphere of India. And also in political culture.\n\nSecond thing is, Communism as an ideology to guide political sphere was too weak in Indian context. Telangana had a rebellion in 1948 but it was against Nizam (the king) it wasn't against the Indian state and Indian state later otherthow the nizam. So Indian state had the capacity to integrate different demands within democratic framework.\nThere was also change of policy in ecomomic arena After the death of Nehru his daughter Indira Gandhi tried to liberalised the economy in 1966 (Mehta- Woods agreement) later her son Rajiv Gandhi also initiated those policies. \n\nThirdly in order to install a pro - government, state usually Target and uses the weakness of other state. In Indian case that weakness was Kashmir. But shaikh Abdullah was having meetings with American aaaars and ambassadors. Soviet Union tried to use it by declaring Kashmir as a part of India. But India under the prime ministership of Nehru managed to integrate Abdullah and his demands under the federal structure. \n\nAlso people are saying Soviet Union exported arms to India but India also got heavy aid from Washington and Washington based institutions especially during third five year plan .",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/upc9or/where_to_find_good_cold_war_quotations/ | upc9or | 2 | t3_upc9or | Where to find good cold war quotations? | Need to get quotations that reflect the orthodox, revisionist and post revisionist schools of thought from the cold war | 0 | 0.44 | null | false | 1,652,514,297 | [
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"body": "Welcome to /r/AskHistorians. **Please [Read Our Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules) before you comment in this community**. Understand that [rule breaking comments get removed](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/h8aefx/rules_roundtable_xviii_removed_curation_and_why/).\n\n#Please consider **[Clicking Here for RemindMeBot](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/upc9or/where_to_find_good_cold_war_quotations/%5D%0A%0ARemindMe!%202%20days)** as it takes time for an answer to be written. Additionally, for weekly content summaries, **[Click Here to Subscribe to our Weekly Roundup](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=AHMessengerBot&subject=Subscribe&message=!subscribe)**.\n\nWe thank you for your interest in this *question*, and your patience in waiting for an in-depth and comprehensive answer to show up. In addition to RemindMeBot, consider [using our Browser Extension](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/d6dzi7/tired_of_clicking_to_find_only_removed_comments/), or getting the [Weekly Roundup](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=subredditsummarybot&subject=askhistorians+weekly&message=x). In the meantime our [Twitter](https://twitter.com/askhistorians), [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/askhistorians/), and [Sunday Digest](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=title%3A%22Sunday+Digest%22&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) feature excellent content that has already been written!\n\n\n*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskHistorians) if you have any questions or concerns.*",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/st46id/cold_war_book_recommendations_written_during_the/ | st46id | 3 | t3_st46id | Cold War book recommendations written during the period? | I always find myself a bit displeased with contemporary history books (on the average). The pressure seems to be that authors have to assume some judgement about the figures, and I am not particularly fond of that. Moreover, I feel that there is value to reading a book written during the period in concern. | 6 | 0.88 | null | false | 1,644,935,358 | [
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"body": ">The pressure seems to be that authors have to assume some judgement about the figures, and I am not particularly fond of that.\n\nSo you want journalism then, not history. For historians, the mere selection of a topic is a value judgement. See Novick, *That Noble Dream.*\n\n>Moreover, I feel that there is value to reading a book written during the period in concern.\n\nThere certainly can be value to work done during the time. But you'll nearly never get a complete picture, because, well, the picture wasn't complete yet. I suggest that you look at newspaper editorials and op-eds. NY Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and many others have excellent archives. You may need to go to a library to avoid paywalls.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/71vkgo/was_coldwar_hysteria_as_large_in_the_ussr_as_it/ | 71vkgo | 264 | t3_71vkgo | Was cold-war hysteria as large in the USSR as it was in the USA? Did the Russians have fallout shelters, "duck and cover", etc? | Follow up question: were there any Russian "There was a turtle by the name of Bert..." style cartoons? | 8,728 | 0.9 | null | false | 1,506,131,637 | [
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"body": "There are two parts of this question. “Cold War hysteria” (to take the term at face value for a moment) had a great many aspects and the worry about nuclear war was only one of them. In the United States, for example, we had McCarthyism, ideological propaganda, etc. Basically all of these things were also present in the Soviet Union. In both cases they were equally important or prominent features throughout the length of the Cold War, that stretched some forty-or-so years. \n\nAlthough there was, in some sense, an ever-present threat of nuclear war,I’d be careful about calling a forty year stretch a sustained period of mass hysteria. The Cold War was a long, complex period and the importance of nuclear technology alongside the threat of nuclear war had far reaching consequences that stretched far beyond the need for bomb shelters and drills. Because you’ve already got a pretty good answer about the Civil Defense aspects of Cold War living, I’m going to focus on some of the social and cultural ramifications of nuclear technology in the context of the Cold War.\n\nLet’s talk about ideological worries first. Under Stalin, ideological purity tests were hardly a new thing by the beginning of the Cold War, but they did take on a new urgency as the contest between the United States and the Soviet Union began to take on an increasingly ideological character.\n\nIn the Soviet Union, particular attention was paid to scientists and engineers. Although it is true that some scientists received relative freedom and privilege because of their central role in, for example, the Soviet nuclear program (see, for example, Soviet physicist Igor Kurchatov), who was told by Stalin in 1945 “If a child doesn’t cry, the mother doesn’t know what he needs. Ask for whatever you like. You won’t be refused” (Suny, The Soviet Experiment, 371) But that dependent on complete political subservience, which was sometimes scientifically limiting. Quantum Theory was considered particularly suspect under Stalin for example (Suny, 372)\n\nOther scientists were not so lucky. Take for example, Iurii Zhdanov (not to be confused with Andrei Zhdanov), a biologist, who came under fire for comments about evolution. He wrote an apology letter to Stalin that provides us with a bit of a window into just how deeply the sciences were beholden to political ideology in the Soviet Union.\n\n>Appearing at a seminar of lecturers with a paper on the debatable questions of modern Darwinism, I undoubtedly committed a whole series of grave mistakes.\n1. The very presentation of this paper was a mistake. I clearly underestimated my new position as a worker within the apparatus of the Central Committee, underestimated my responsibility, and failed to take into consideration that my appearance will be thought of as an official point of view of the Central Committee. Here was expressed that “university habit,” when I made known my viewpoints in any scientific controversy without meditation. Therefore, when I was invited to give a paper at a seminar of lecturers, I decided to express my deliberations there with the reservation that this is “a personal point of view,” so that my appearance would not obligate anyone to anything. There is no doubt that this was “professorial” in its poor judgment and not the Party position.\n(The entire letter can be found in translation here: http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1947-2/triumph-of-t-d-lysenko/triumph-of-t-d-lysenko-texts/zhdanov-letter-to-the-central-committee/)\n\nNuclear and more conventional conflict were consistent topics on the minds of the Soviet leadership and the Soviet people, but the Soviet Union was not monolithic, nor was the United States. Aftter the death of Stalin and the election of Eisenhower, the Soviet leadership hoped that a relative peace could be established (This period is commonly know at “the Thaw”). \nNonetheless, as you know, the Cold War continued to the end of the Soviet Union in spite of the fact that periods of relative stability were established by the two governments. Of course, this was happening at the same that nuclear weapons became the focus of both militaries. Both countries saw conventional military spending go down, but saw spending on nuclear arms increase by 1960.\n\nThe Soviet Union had an extensive system of bomb shelters as well. The Moscow Metro, much of which served as bomb shelters in World War 2, was an ever-present feature of Soviet citizens living in Moscow, and was also to serve as a massive shelter in the case of a nuclear attack. Children had drills, and so forth. (As already answered)\n\nThe similarities went beyond that though. Kate Brown makes a compelling case about the similarities of Soviet and US “nuclear cities” in her book Plutopia, not to mention the cultural effects of plutonium disasters that occurred during the same period. The cities of Richland and Ozersk had quite a lot in common, down to government monitoring of the citizenry, health risks, etc, on the downside and access to consumer society (yes, even in the Soviet Union). Brown’s argument is interesting, in that these two cities represented the American Dream and the success of Soviet communism on the one hand and (later) the danger of the production of nuclear material. \n\nIn the end, perhaps, that’s the story here. The nuclear technology that accompanied the Cold War was at once a source of optimism and a source of worry. This was true in both the Soviet Union and the United States. The internal politics of the United States and the Soviet Union were radically different, so it is interesting to see how the Cold War and nuclear technology ended up manifesting in very similar ways in both places. \n",
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"body": "I wouldn't call it \"hysteria\" (\"exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion or excitement\") — the USA and the USSR both _were_ threatened by the possibility of nuclear war. The USSR even more than the USA for most of it; the USA [ringed the USSR with airbases full of nuclear-armed bombers](http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/US-nuclear-bomber-deployments-1945-1958.jpg) by the 1950s, with war plans that would leave the USSR a \"smoking, radiating ruin at the end of two hours,\" as one of the US officers involved in the planning put it. This was followed up by ICBMs, short-range nuclear missiles, submarine-launched missiles, atomic artillery, etc. Through the 1960s, the balance of nuclear strength was disproportionately in the US's favor; only in the 1970s was there a real \"parity\" in terms of both sides being able to inflict identical damage to one another, though even by the 1960s the USSR was capable of doing great harm to the USA. \n\nI would not consider fallout shelters, duck and cover, etc., to be \"hysterical\" under those circumstances: they were part of the US Civil Defense program, the goal of which was to try and mitigate (as much as possible) the effects of a nuclear exchange that the politicians felt may not be preventable, to keep as much of the US \"alive\" after it so that recovery might be to some degree possible. It is easy to laugh at this stuff in retrospect when you do not respect the very real sense of danger that existed at the time, though I have found in recent months that Americans are getting a taste for that feeling once again. Many of the Cold War CD policies were flawed in many ways (e.g. city evacuation was just not going to work for major metropolises), many were only of relative help (e.g. they would not save everyone but would lower the number of casualties), many were very specific to their specific strategic moment (_Duck and Cover_ is good advice for 1951, but it was inadequate by the 1960s, when the size and power of the Soviet arsenal was larger, and fallout the more pertinent \"survivable\" threat). It is unfortunately very misunderstood, having turned into a political hot potato in the US and Europe by both the left and the right in the 1980s. \n\nThat out of the way, your question comes down to, \"were there Soviet Civil defense programs, public service announcements, etc.?\" And the answer is: yes. The Soviet Union did have Civil Defense programs that were similar in many ways to the American ones. They had fallout shelters, public blast shelters, various forms of public education programs that were aimed at schoolchildren and adults alone, etc. I am not aware of anything quite as kitschy as _Duck and Cover_, which is extreme kitsch by any standard. The most famous Soviet Civil Defense document in the West is _[Grazhdanskaya Oborona](http://bunker-datacenter.com/plakat.go/)_ (\"Civil Protection\"), a textbook of Civil Defense (this one from 1986, but apparently it was first issued originally in 1970), which is rather beautiful to my eyes, illustrated in the _lubok_ style of a peasant woodcut.\n\nThe real historical question about Soviet Civil Defense was, how \"for real\" was it? In the 1970s and 1980s there were accusations by hawks in the US that the Soviet CD program was lightyears beyond the (always anemic) US program, and that Soviet strategists felt nuclear war was thus \"survivable\" and would be more willing to wage it. While the Soviet CD program was definitely better-funded than the American one — no great feat given how much of a low priority CD was (the US fallout shelter program was, ultimately, aimed at convincing people to _build their own_ — indeed, much of the US program was no more than an information campaign, not a real infrastructure project), there is no evidence that they regarded it as any serious \"hedge\" or incorporated it into a more belligerent warfighting strategy, and how \"useful\" it was is rather debatable.\n\nHe will have a book out on this soon, I believe, but in the meantime, the best comparative history of the US and Soviet Civil Defense programs is Edward M. Geist, \"Two World of Civil Defense: State, Society, and Nuclear Survival in the USA and USSR, 1945-1991,\" Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2013. For what it is worth, I think the most important aspect of Civil Defense in the United States is that it caused Americans to face up, with some sobering honesty, about the possibility of nuclear war; to this end, I am one of the launchers of the [Reinventing Civil Defense Project](http://reinventingcivildefense.org) which seeks to think about what Civil Defense might look like, and ought to look like, in the 21st century.",
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"body": "Not a subscriber; but can I ask a follow up question?\n\nIf so, are there any good videos (Doesn't need to be in English) of what the USSR did to teach people via media? Like in the US you see those videos of kids at school. Does the USSR have any?",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/symyr7/is_there_a_good_military_history_text_about_the/ | symyr7 | 2 | t3_symyr7 | Is there a good military history text about the development of radio usage in small units (platoon size or smaller) during World War 2 and the Cold war? | I'm doing a Kelly's Heroes-style pen and paper rpg campaign with some friends in the near future and I'm looking to have a good grounding on this whole topic. If the text covers the major pitfalls and failings in introducing radios at this level all the better.
If it turns out that there are loads of texts on this topic then anything about radio usage by recon units in Korea would be perfect but I'll take anything plus or minus thirty years about any nation's military if there's a paucity of texts. | 11 | 0.84 | null | false | 1,645,534,615 | [
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"body": "In general, a lot of WW2 communications electronics carried over, so if you have things already on WW2, you're not necessarily far off.\n\nThe closest I can think of to a manual that will make you happy for the period you want is Marvin's Curtis's History of the Squad Radio published by US Army Electronics Command, which happens to be online. (Reddit doesn't like my link, but [the first choice of this Google search should work](https://www.google.com/search?q=ECOM+4451%2C+Nov+1976%2C+History+of+the+Squad+Radio&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS922US922&sxsrf=APq-WBvE6_LyFVPmDGJbnC7pvXMc4C3kTA%3A1645549112684&ei=OBYVYqWJKbHJkPIP462_4A0&ved=0ahUKEwilhcmS5JP2AhWxJEQIHePWD9wQ4dUDCA4&uact=5&oq=ECOM+4451%2C+Nov+1976%2C+History+of+the+Squad+Radio&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAMyBwgjELADECdKBQg8EgExSgQIQRgBSgQIRhgAUABYAGCxA2gBcAB4AIABAIgBAJIBAJgBAMgBAcABAQ&sclient=gws-wiz).)\n\n\nYou might also enjoy *Getting the Message Through: A Branch History of the U.S. Army Signal Corps* which [also happens to be online](https://history.army.mil/books/30-17/Front.htm#toc) courtesy the US Army, if for nothing else [this picture](https://history.army.mil/books/30-17/notes/325.jpg) of a signalman using a water buffalo to stretch wires in Korea.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pa7j6t/should_the_majority_of_latin_american_countries/ | pa7j6t | 5 | t3_pa7j6t | Should the majority of Latin American countries during the Cold War be considered “satellite states” of the United States, just like the majority of Eastern Europe being satellites of the Soviet Union? | The Soviet Union under Stalin installed communist governments in Eastern Europe. Khrushchev and Brezhnev made sure they were still communist, but relaxed their restrictions on the states. They did however launch invasions of Hungary, Yugoslavia and Poland when communism or the Warsaw Pact looked to be threatened.
With the CIA manipulating governments and sponsoring coups in Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, Argentina etc, should the majority of Latin American states during that period be considered satellites? | 117 | 0.87 | null | false | 1,629,748,687 | [
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"body": "Let’s look at what actually took place. We will start with the Rio Pact in 1947. This agreement bound many Latin American nations to the US in terms of defense, theoretically. But even long before that, the Monroe doctrine and Roosevelt Colliery had made the US the dominant force through out the Western Hemisphere. But the US didn’t run them like the USSR ran the Warsaw Pact. Yugoslavia by the way, was not a member of the Warsaw Pact and was a founding member of the non-aligned movement. It was also never invaded. \n\nThe concept of the third world, which is problematic unto itself, was/is composed of the developing nations not in NATO, the Warsaw Pact, nor a part of Communist East Asia. Latin America was major center of this. There were “client” states of the US and USSR spread through out the third world. Chile, Brazil, and Argentina could all be called US client states, depending on American military hardware and support. Meanwhile, Angola, Somalia (prior to the Ogaden war), and Ethiopia under the Derg could be called Soviet satellite states. Cuba, Mongolia, and Afghanistan definitely could be called client states of the USSR. \n\nNow let’s get back to could the Latin American states under heavy American influence in the Cold War be called satellite states? Sure, because the term is subjective. The US and Soviet Union backed different regimes, like India and Pakistan, solely because the other backed its nemesis. Was Pakistan more “pro-western” than India? Probably not, but the US backed Pakistan because India had close ties to the USSR.",
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"body": "A thread to consider looking when considering this question is [Why did the US overthrow so many democratically elected governments in Latin America?](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ihtjjn/why_did_the_us_overthrow_so_many_democratically/). \n\n\nI suggest that, because when we think of the CIA manipulating governments and sponsoring coups, it's important to remember that the U.S. and the CIA heavily influenced and invested in the degradation of leftist actors *mostly through supporting right-wing domestic actors.* \n\n\nAs /u/iconicjester puts it, \"In each case, domestic actors were the prime movers, right-wing factions within the countries themselves looking to take power and change the ideological direction. But the US was nevertheless instrumental in providing support and coordination for these regimes, and of course they were recognised [sic] rather than made into pariahs by US diplomacy.\"\n\n\nThis is an important consideration on this subject because a satellite state shares allegiance with a larger state. The question is whether these Latin American nations more aligned with the United States, specifically, or more aligned with anti-Communism and anti-Leftism irregardless of the U.S.\n\n\n\nDespite similar results - a right-wing dictatorship that used state sponsored terrorism to combat leftist activists and opponents - most of these countries had varied paths toward that result. \n\n\n\nTaking the example of Chile: even before the election of Salvador Allende, domestic actors felt worried about the rise of leftism. After his election, many of these actors coordinated right wing resistance and protests, from the [March of Empty Pots and Pans](https://www.forgingmemory.org/narrative/march-empty-pots-and-pans) in [1971](https://www.nytimes.com/1971/12/02/archives/womens-protest-quelled-in-chile-marchers-assail-castros-visit-and.html) to trucker strikes and radio seizures by far-right movements and leaders like [Carmen Saenz de Phillips](https://www.nytimes.com/1973/08/19/archives/women-are-in-forefront-of-chiles-trucker-strike-pots-and-pans.html).\n\n\nAll of these had traces of the U.S. influence in economic actions such as [the CIA](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/chile/2014-05-22/what-really-happened-chile) giving money to some of the pots and pan protestors. But it wasn't inevitable that Pinochet and the military would lead a coup - a result initially loved by Nixon, but a result not planned or executed.\n\n\nIt should also be noted that while the United States influenced these affairs, other anti-Communist and \"Western\" countries like [the United Kingdom](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/11/chile-1973-coup-britain-protecting) supported Pinochet and right wing movements.\n\n\nUltimately, Chile had a government friendly to the U.S. that shared common interests, but a government that also didn't follow the U.S.'s interests wholesale. Pinochet ultimately didn't reverse the nationalization of copper that Allende had commenced to the chagrin of private business interests outside of Chile. And while the U.S. supported Chile under Pinochet, that relationship grew strained from both sides through the Letelier Affair and the 1980's when Reagan and his State Department began to [nudge Pinochet towards democracy](https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/review-reagan-and-pinochet/). \n\n\nI would argue, then, that while Chile benefited from U.S. influence and investment, the coup ultimately served a domestic self-interest against Communism with domestic actors leading the removal of Allende.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pqzonx/women_in_the_ussr_red_army_were_allowed_to_join/ | pqzonx | 7 | t3_pqzonx | Women in the USSR Red Army were allowed to join as medics, snipers, and pilots, after WWII, in the Cold War? (circa: 1960s) | I could not find anything that said yes or no | 23 | 0.91 | null | false | 1,632,018,916 | [
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"body": "Women were permitted to serve, but by all accounts the portion of women serving during the Cold War was very low. Most estimates I have seen put it at between 10,000 and 20,000 depending on the year, with a slight increase during the 1980s. A Defense Intelligence Agency Report from 1976 says there were as few as 659 women in the SA in 1959, out of about 4 million standing strength.^(1) Frustratingly, all of the estimates I have found so far are Western intelligence estimates and not Russian primary sources. Western assessments of the Soviet military at the time were rather fraught and sometimes missed important context, or were entirely incorrect.\n\nWhat we do know for certain from the documentary record is as follows.\n\n# The Laws\n\nThe laws governing recruitment for the Soviet military did permit women in the service. Further, **notionally** the law after 1967 **did** permit the conscription of women in wartime. In detail: Until 1967 service was governed chiefly by the 1939 Law on Universal Military Service (as well as the amendments of 1940, 1941, 1943, 1950, and 1954). The 1939 law permitted the mobilization of \"women having medical, veterinarian, and special technical training\" but unless I am mistaken it did not permit their forcible conscription. Certainly during WW2 the Soviets undertook concerted recruitment and mobilization efforts for these women, but not conscription. As I will address further on in this post, the evidence is overwhelming that the Soviet government and society as a whole generally this as an undesirable anomaly, and went to great lengths to return to \"business as normal\" after the end of the war.\n\nArticle 16 of the 1967 Law tells us that\n\n>Women 19 to 40 years of age who have medical or specialized training can be taken into military service in peacetime, recruited for refresher training periods or admitted as volunteers for active duty. \n> \n>In wartime women can be drafted into the USSR Armed Forces by decision of the USSR Council of Ministers to perform auxiliary or specialized service.\n\nWomen were also not permitted to enter the officer academies, which severely curtailed their entry into most career fields. The aforementioned DIA report claims that women were also proscribed from most armed positions and positions on combat ships.^(2) This tracks with some firmer evidence we have from the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan in particular ([the subject of one of my previous answers](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/lmbtrb/were_there_female_soviet_soldiers_deployed_during/gnxdptg/?context=3)) suggesting that virtually all of the women who served in OKSVA were either medical staff or admin staff. This previous answer, citing Mark Galeotti's social history of the Soviets in Afghanistan, estimates that during that war about 1.5% of the SA was female. Also according to this DIA report, what little active recruitment there was for women in the post-1967 SA was focused on unmarried & childless 19-25 year olds.^(3)\n\nOne curious piece of evidence, which I am lumping in with \"the laws\" even though it was really a Soviet Army regulation, does hint at some acknowledgement of female servicemembers in theory. The 1975 edition of the Устав Внутренней cлужбы Вооруженных cил СССР (Internal Service Charter of the Armed Forces of the USSR) describes a range of daily responsibilities, duties, and protocols for the armed forces irrespective of specific billets or combat taskings. This includes protocols for rewarding soldiers for good performance, as well as for non-judicial punishments for crimes. There are a handful of curious gender variances in these two sections. Men are permitted to be rewarded with either short blocks of leave or a promotion to the next appropriate rank within their billet, among other rewards; women have neither of these reward enumerated in their section. Also, female officers are not permitted to be put in the jailhouse/stockades while awaiting judicial review for crimes (a privilege also reserved for ship captains).^(4)\n\n# Soviet Gender Norms\n\nVolumes have been written about gender norms in Soviet Russia and the Union in general, such that trying to summarize the entire social construction(s) & interpretations of gender in the USSR is vastly beyond the scope of this post.^(5) Speaking in rough generalities, we can say that the (often state-backed) hegemonic conception of gender roles in the USSR was fairly conservative, despite the genuine egalitarian bent in educational and workforce policies. This patriarchal tendency was not static with time of course - the Leninist, early Stalinist, and Khruschev eras are particularly considered to be strong reformist periods.\n\nHowever, the Great Patriotic War period informed all aspects of future Soviet military policies much more strongly than any other period in Soviet history. The war period was also marked by a staunchly conservative turn in gender roles - despite the massive participation of women in the Red Army during the war! As a number of authors including Reina Pennington, Roger Markwick & Euridice Charon Cardona have argued, Soviet policy towards fighting-age women in the war was sort of pulling in two directions (with one direction or another dominating as the exact wartime needs shifted).^(6,7) On the one hand, the realities of the manpower collapse in 1941 necessitated expanding the recruitment pool. On the other hand, war propaganda centered on shoring up patriotic sentiment through references to a specifically *Russian* past, and this included more traditional gender norms like motherhood and a vision of women \"holding down the fort\" while the men served at the front. These two were never entirely at odds - there was a strand of propaganda which emphasized the motherly, nurturing aspects *and* the patriotic duty exhibited by female nurses.\n\nEven before the end of the war Soviet authorities started to confront a demographic crisis caused by the colossal death toll of the war, propaganda turned sharply back towards motherhood. As demobilization began, virtually every woman in the Red Army was demobilized by the end of 1946. A number of laws and policies to incentivize childrearing \"locked in\" a more maternal role for Soviet women, although they were also heavily encouraged to stay in the workforce to help make up for the loss of working-aged men during the war. Khruschev's reforms did attempt to bring more women into political engagement, particularly bodies like the Komsomol, but I am not aware of any evidence that this extended to military service.^(8) Several of the higher-profile female aviators recall being pushed out of the service during the mid-late 1950s, during Khruschev's tenure as First Secretary.^(9)\n\nWhere is this going? Well, certainly in the 1960s time period you're asking about, we have some strong cultural evidence suggesting that even though it would have been lawful for women to volunteer and even be recruited for non-combat positions, in actuality they were strongly dissuaded from such.\n\n**Conclusion: In the absence of firm, primary-source numbers on the number of women in the Armed Forces of the USSR in the 1960s we can estimate from secondary sources that there were likely no more than 10,000 serving, and probably far fewer before 1967.**",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rwwnb0/during_cold_war_france_was_officialy_selling/ | rwwnb0 | 5 | t3_rwwnb0 | During Cold War France was officialy selling weapons to Israel and South Africa. Was France alone in doing so and why did they sell it? My understanding was that during the time Israel and South Africa were rather unwanted clientele for official trade, especially armaments | 3 | 0.72 | null | false | 1,641,416,123 | [
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"body": "You're correct that France did sell weapons to Israel during the Cold War. It would be incorrect to say that it was alone in doing so to Israel. After all, the Cold War was still raging in 1968, when France stopped supplying Israel with weapons following the 1967 war, and the US sold Phantom jets (F-4s) to Israel.\n\nThis was the first sale of US military equipment to Israel, or at least advanced military equipment. The US had sold defensive weaponry to Israel prior, like radar equipment in 1960 and Hawk anti-aircraft missiles in 1962. But the F-4s were significant offensive weaponry. The US, until that point, had viewed arming Israel to be pointless. While Israel was seen as quite strong, the US wanted to maintain good relations with Arab states, was still pursuing a policy of seeking them as allies (even though that ship had sailed long before, as long before as Eisenhower with Egypt, for example), and believed *eventually* Israel would be defeated by the sheer superior numbers of the Arab world. There was likely a level of inertia in policymaking as well that brought this about. But after Israel's decisive victory in 1967, and the beginnings of a very clear nuclear program, as well as the prospect of losing what was increasingly being seen as an ally by the US government and populace once France ceased its supply, the US shifted gears. I'm unfamiliar with relationships between France and South Africa, but France was not Israel's *only* supplier of weapons during ~20 years before the US began selling weapons to Israel. In fact, the Soviets (through Czechoslovakia) had sold Israel some frankly pivotal weapons, not of an advanced nature but much needed ammunition, rifles, etc., during the course of the 1948 war. However, no other country was a major arms supplier during this time; it's not like there were many to choose from, either, if the US was unwilling. The Soviets were certainly no friends of Israel; an early relationship was ended with the antisemitism rife in Stalin's Doctor's Plot and the general sense that Israel would align with the West after all, and was no longer useful as a wedge to harm the British once established. Still, if we already know why the US was reluctant and the Soviets hostile, why the French and not the British as the next runner-up? The British were already supplying Arab states, and had been since the 1948 war, expecting (and perhaps hoping for) the Arabs to win. In part, this supply was meant to mollify Egypt as the British were debating and arguing with them over bases still present there. The increasing double standard was argued against by Israel, but the Foreign Office refused to reconsider, perhaps still hoping to influence Egypt and otherwise not caring much about what followed. Some internal voices laid out arguments that selling arms to the Arab states but not Israel was more likely to lead to a war, but these were rejected or ignored. But when Czechoslovakia (i.e. the Soviets) sold weapons to Egypt, largely mooting any influence the British might have had, the British did not reconsider. They kept supplying weapons to Iraq and Jordan under preexisting treaties. They also sold 20 tanks to Israel, but not heavy tanks and certainly not a significant bolstering of Israeli forces. The Foreign Office figured that if Israel was attacked, it could survive without British arms, and that if it couldn't, no amount of arms would suffice to defend it. The British also stuck to a desire to implement \"Operation Alpha\", a peace plan they hoped to carry out between Israel and the Arab states that never got off the ground; arms provisions were a major carrot/stick inducement to try and implement it. The British in 1956 were asked once more to sell the heavy tanks, even secretly, but refused saying that such a sale might deter Egypt, but would damage their relationships with Iraq and Jordan, and so they declined. The UK did, around 1958 following the collapse of its Middle East policy, start to sell those heavy tanks to Israel. So while the UK and the US were willing to sell to Israel eventually, it took time in their own respects to reach that decision, largely because of their own alliances with other states (i.e. Israel's enemies) more than anything else.\n\nThe relationship Israel built with France, however, was stronger. In large part, it began because France held sympathy for Israel. France was fighting in Algeria, and Nasser (Egypt's leader) was helping supply the Algerian cause. Israel was obviously opposed to Nasser, which meant the two were naturally aligned. France lacked any such good relationship with Egypt or hope to sway it that the UK had, and lacked a relationship with Iraq or Jordan, and its existing relationships with other Arab states were not as strong at any rate. There was also a good commercial component to it, which certainly did not hurt.\n\nFrance would eventually switch to ending sales to Israel after the 1967 war. This was in part because the alignment of interests had shifted; France had withdrawn from Algeria and no longer had the same opposition to Arab nationalism at play. Additionally, some nasty antisemitism came to the fore on the part of Charles de Gaulle, who called Jews \"an elite people, sure of itself, and dominating\". This was jarring, considering his prior support for Israel. Books, letters, and compendiums all show his complex views on Jews. Some posit that his comment was merely because he was upset with Israel having launched its preemptive strike on Egypt, which he had opposed; still, that seems like poor excuse for antisemitism, and is unjustified by any measure. He certainly faced significant [opposition within France](https://www.jta.org/archive/criticism-mounts-against-de-gaulle-in-france-for-attack-on-israel-jewish-people), and that antisemitic comment led to a furor. Nevertheless, France decided to try and court the Arab world after 1967, rather than stay aligned with Israel, even as the US was doing the opposite.\n\nI'm not sure, but I don't know that there are parallels between France-Israel policy and that of France and South Africa, or of the world's and South Africa's. I imagine the two are different in terms of France's motivations, and the world's motivations, but plead unfamiliarity with South Africa overall.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/efmaaq/in_the_us_we_hear_a_lot_about_the_red_scare/ | efmaaq | 51 | t3_efmaaq | In the US we hear a lot about the Red Scare during the Cold War, but not so much about the other side. Did citizens of Soviet Russia have an equivalent "capitalist" or "democratic" scare? | I imagine the Soviet government produced substantial anti-US propaganda, but information is hard to find. For example wikipedia articles on the topic are sparse [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-American\_sentiment\_in\_Russia#Cold\_War\_era\_politics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-American_sentiment_in_Russia#Cold_War_era_politics) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda\_in\_the\_Soviet\_Union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_the_Soviet_Union). Other articles that mention US-Soviet relations discuss (rightfully) the political relations more than the day-to-day life of individuals.
EDIT: Thank you for the incredibly informative posts and to those who asked questions about potentially more controversial points. | 2,350 | 0.95 | null | false | 1,577,310,313 | [
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"body": "Absolutely. From the late 1920s through 1976, anti-democracy, anti-capitalist, and anti-bourgeoisie movements were common place in the Communist Party of China (CPC) before they won the civil war and in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) after it was formed in 1949. Generally, these movements can be described as “anti-revolutionary,” meaning against the Communist/Socialist revolution. The politics being what they were, targeted groups were often those with ties to Western capitalist cultures, democratic ideals, or those who were actual capitalists—people that owned business or land.\n\nMany of these movements tended to become extreme, ending in the murder or imprisonment of targeted individuals. At times, the CPC leadership specifically called for harsher and crueler treatment of “enemies,” which were excluded from their communities, social services, and even jobs on the basis that they fell into “black classes” or were labeled “monsters and freaks.” Average participants would sometimes take advantage of the permitted chaos for personal gain (e.g. to get revenge on a neighbor). Moreover, choosing not to participate in a purge could bring suspicion on yourself, and children often denounced their parents, sometimes causing their deaths. In some cases, there were quotas on how many individuals (or what percent) in a given community must be “bad” or against Communist victory. The result was an increasing frenzy of “revolutionary” activity.\n\nExplicitly anti-US movements were somewhat rarer than movements aimed internally at sniffing out Western democratic or capitalist influence. A primary reason for this was that China’s purges were not geopolitical at their core (like McCarthyism was). In broadest terms, purges under the CPC were meant to ensure their success in achieving a socialist revolution for their country; remaking the Chinese populous into “modern people”—that is, removing the mental constraints of traditional values, traditional beliefs, and imperial culture; and ensuring the continued leadership of the CPC.\n\nHowever, anti-US propaganda abounded in Chinese society after 1949, but especially after the Korean War. As a result, family or friends in or past travel to or study in the US was enough to become a target in most of the purges taking place after the mid-1950s. Even being friends with someone matching a description above could get a person in trouble. There were even cases where CPC spies who had once been directed to mingle with enemies (e.g. British, Americans, and members of the Chinese Nationalist Party) for gathering intel later had these pro-revolutionary actions held against them, leading to detention or death.\n\nNotable examples include:\n—AB Tuan Incident of 1926: this is not anti-capitalist per se, but is one of the earliest violent purges that set the stage for what was to come and what was expected under Mao Zedong’s leadership\n\n—Tugai (i.e. land reform) from 1927-53: poor rural Chinese were actively instigated to violently reclaim land from capitalists and redistribute it more equitably. Mao specifically urged the “revolutionary” classes (meaning the poorer classes) to rise up, treat landed bourgeoisie with malice, and hold them to account in order to throw off the shackles of imperialism.\n\n—Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957: intellectuals that spoke out against the CPC’s violent tactics and collectivized economy were denounced, beaten, and imprisoned for their views—even after having spoken out because an earlier campaign specifically solicited feedback on CPC policies\n\n—Cultural Revolution from 1966-1976: this was essentially a mega-purge, especially in the first 3 years, meant to shake-up the core of Chinese politics and society (and ensure that Mao Zedong remained in power despite disastrous policies in years earlier). In addition to the traditional anti-revolutionary targets and violent tactics of other purges, there was a more pronounced geopolitical element in this movement as well. At the time, China was isolated from and increasingly hostile with the US (until Nixon’s visit and the 90 degree turn in relations). People burned effigies of US figures, protested outside US (and European) embassies, and renamed street signs with Western names.\n\nTo instigate participation in these movements and disseminate anti-revolutionary and anti-US messages, there was a grand propaganda apparatus. For it’s time and the state of China during that period (they had been in a state of war and disorganization for nearly 5 decades by 1950), it was quite sophisticated. There were printed materials distributed to households all over the country. There were community “spies” who attempted to correct negative discussions as they occurred and reported dissatisfaction back to the Center. There were loudspeakers rigged across towns and villages so that CPC propaganda messages were unavoidable. There were regular mandatory study sessions in work places. And there were events for people to recognize, admit, and correct their mistakes after they were denounced by their communities.\n\nWritten documents showing anti-US, anti-capitalist, and anti-democratic messages are discoverable. The easiest place is to look if you can read Chinese or have a friend that can is archives of the People’s Daily newspaper (these can be found online or through your school, assuming you’re in college). Because People’s Daily was and is the CPC’s official mouthpiece, it’s content is typically parroted across many newspapers, especially back in the day. Examples of propaganda art posters can also be found online.\n\nSome of my favorite sources and materials discussing purges and revolution in China:\n\n—The Columbia Guide to Modern Chinese History (English book)\n\n—Mao’s Last Revolution (English book)\n\n—How the Red Sun Rose (Chinese book)\n\n—A Hundred People’s Decade (一百个人的十年) (Chinese book)\n\n—Searching for Lin Zhao’s Soul (Chinese documentary available on YouTube with subtitles (at least it was earlier this year))\n\n—Swiss Witnesses to the Cultural Revolution: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/the-swiss-witnesses-to-chinas-cultural-revolution\n\n—This collection of propaganda art: https://chineseposters.net\n\nEdit: Someone pointed out that OP asked about Stalin and the USSR specifically. I read the question incorrectly and assumed it was more general about whether there were scared and purges that were directed against Westernism/capitalism outside of the US. My mistake. I’ll let the mods decide whether to leave it in case it’s interesting to others on the sub.",
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"body": "There's already a detailed answer on early-USSR and Stalin terror, but if you're interested in a Cold War era - then yes, there was a lot of fear of capitalist aggression (the focus was always on capitalism or on USA as the main antagonist, not on democracy) among regular soviet folks, and this fear was spread, reinforced and mass-produced by Party and State.\n\nHere's the [source link](https://www.alexanderyakovlev.org/fond/issues-doc/69577) (text in Russian) for the main document which established the USSR propaganda efforts dated March, 1949 - the document title can be translated as \"Anti-american propaganda activity plan\".\n\nThere's also some additional references and info in a book by *Vladimir Abarinov \"Hollywood and Stalin\", 2016* - some of his earlier works were translated into English, although I am not sure if this one was.\n\nAnyway, in the early 50s the story was as follows:\n\n* There was a separate committee (similar to ministry) of the Party which was officially called \"Committee for propaganda and agitation\" (yes, that's the official name, and \"propaganda\" was a part of this official name) - Agitprop unofficially - whose main goal was to establish an anti-US and anti-Western propaganda strategy to paint west and the capitalism in a negative way.\n* Agitprop was created in 1949 (as per doc linked above) and continued to exist under different names up till USSR collapse in 1991, and the word \"propaganda\" was only removed from it's official name in 1988, when it was renamed to \"Ideology committee\".\n* Agitprop was tasked to create and distribute propaganda through various state-owned media and resources - for example, major newsparers were tasked with producing and printing anti-Capitalist articles, comics, poetry. State-mandated literature and art division was also required to request plays, books, art from USSR's artists on anti-Western topics.\n\nIn a situation where all media is state-controlled and where's no easy way to get alternative opinions these efforts were quite successful. Probably just like in the US, a lot of common folks felt that their way of life is threatened by the enemy.\n\nCommon topics of the anti-West propaganda were:\n\n* Anti-war. Especially in the early 50s when the US had an upper hand in nuclear arms and power a lot of efforts were put in painting US and the West as aggressors, focused on war and destruction, while painting USSR and the Eastern Block as proponents of peace. Here's a [common example](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DbOv2T0WkAEQE-Z.jpg) of a propaganda poster on this topic - the text says \"NO FUNNY BUSINESS!\" and the text on the bomb held by a capitalist says \"Atomic bomb\".\n\n* Social issues. USSR and communist block was painted as a fair and inclusive state where everyone gets their fair share, while capitalist countries were depicted as being motivated only by greed and profit. [Common example](https://u.livelib.ru/reader/lena_k_monino/o/mtasao9t/o-o.png) - the text explains that in the west the talent has no chance while in USSR you are able to achieve your best. \n\n* Anti-colonialism and equality. An easy win for USSR propaganda - the communist rhetoric was always about equality and unity, and racial & segregation issues, exploitation of the colonies by capitalist West was a common target. [Example](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/99/b2/5b/99b25ba475641c85e21f36e1a1463e6e.jpg) - this was an anti-colonial poster supporting liberation of Africa, text says \"End the colonialism\".\n\nThere were also a lot of positive propaganda efforts (just focused on highlighting the benefits of communism and living in USSR) without contradistinction with the West. Every major historical event - Korean war, Vietnam war, Cuban crisis - was also supported with a very strong message and lots of articles and books which always painted USSR in the best light possible. Dissenting opinions, as I mentioned earlier, were hard to come by as all media was state controlled. Publishing or expressing dissenting opinion was at least a misdemeanour, and sometimes a felony.\n\nThe amount and the tone of state propaganda and the level of unrest and disturbance it caused varied from period to period - in the 60s during Khruschev's Thaw things were better, then worse again after Cuban Crisis etc.",
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"body": "If you are looking for information on Soviet political purges, there is an informative comment on [Stalin's purges](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3p6xm2/how_could_stalins_cleanses_happen_when_it/cw3wnbu/?context=3) by a now deleted user.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/jpjvbc/in_the_netflix_series_the_queens_gambit_some/ | jpjvbc | 24 | t3_jpjvbc | In the Netflix series "The Queen's Gambit", some characters in New York City make a direct phone call to Moscow in 1968. Would something like that actually be possible in real life? An american civilian making a phone call to the USSR during the cold war? | 473 | 0.96 | null | false | 1,604,720,613 | [
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"body": "Sure; a [1965 Bell System ad](https://clickamericana.com/wp-content/uploads/march-1965-international-phone-rates-750x500.jpg) touts being able to call 182 countries, that is, most of them. \n\nWhat couldn’t necessarily be done is an automatic call; an automatic line in New York was opened in 1963 but it only went to London and Frankfurt. Even as late as the 80s calls to most of the USSR were done the old fashioned way: with a switchboard operator. \n\nThe operator (based on the caller’s request) would manually set up a call to a particular place, but it could take (depending on destination) anywhere from 20 minutes to a few days to make a connection. The problems were essentially technical; the number of trunk lines going from the US to the USSR was small (around 30) and the phone network on the USSR’s side was not advanced.\n\nThe phone network in the USSR was never given high priority, and a lot of the lines were for institutional purposes (in the 1960s, 90% of households in the US had telephones; I don’t have a 1960s comparison number for the USSR, but in 1980 only 23% of urban and 8% of rural households had a telephone line). This is why contact time took a while; sound quality was allegedly also rather bad. \n\nBased on the question, I think there is some implication of concern about spy-network communication via phone line being an obstacle. Keep in mind operators could listen to the calls; a phone line would be a very bad way to pass private messages, and while I don’t know any verified cases, it would be very easy for a government agent to be in on the call as well. \n\n...\n\nBarton, J. (2014). Videochatting With Communists. The Atlantic.\n\nBrock, G. J., & Sutherland, E. (2000). Telecommunications and economic growth in the former USSR. East European Quarterly, 34(3).\n\nCampbell, R. (1988). The Soviet Telecommunications System. Hudson Institute. \n\nChapuis, R., & Joel, A. (2003). 100 Years of Telephone Switching: Manual and electromechanical switching (1878-1960s). IOS Press.",
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"body": " And how much would that cost?",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/sxfxcq/what_were_the_plans_of_us_forces_stationed_in/ | sxfxcq | 2 | t3_sxfxcq | What were the plans of US Forces stationed in Berlin during the Cold War if the conflict became "hot" or armed conflict broke out, given they were stationed in an enclave deep within East Germany? | So, it was about 160 km to the East/West German border from Berlin at the time. If the Cold War broke out into actual armed conflict, what would have been the plan of the US Army Berlin command, the Berlin Brigade, etc.? Did they have enough provisions to hold out despite being behind the Iron Curtain geographically? Were East German/Soviet forces relatively sparse around the city that getting surrounded was not that big of an issue? Would NATO forces have easily arrived from West Germany for reinforcements (Would they have tried to re-supply from the air again)? | 5 | 0.77 | null | false | 1,645,403,670 | [
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"body": "While I cannot speak for what the exact plan for conventional forces was in any given timeframe during the Cold War, the assumption is that the US Army in Berlin would fight in place until they were: relieved, overrun, or could conduct a breakout and pass friendly lines. A fascinating tool that would sustain the longevity of the Berlin Brigade was the [Detachment A, 39th Special Forces Group](https://sofrep.com/news/special-forces-detachment-a-an-elite-cold-war-unit/). This unit, in the event of hostilities, would be tasked with conducting harassment and demolitions missions in order to stall and reroute Soviet maneuver units and reinforcements into Berlin. In the event of the overrun of West Berlin, the unit would conduct “Stay behind operations”, essentially, sabotage missions and organizing armed resistance. This is important as from the 60’s onwards, the REFORGER exercises continuously built upon NATO’s ability to mass forces on NATO’s Western flanks, however one of the prevailing defense plans to evolve as the Soviet’s weapons lethality became more readily visible (Soviet designed weapons were showcased heavily during the wars in the Middle East) was that of an active defense. In the active defense role (Particularly near the Fulda Gap, though this has been argued to NOT be the most important crossing point for Warsaw Pact forces for a myriad of reasons; it was one of the most obvious routes to score a potentially decisive victory against American ground forces however) NATO would essentially utilize screening forces to orchestrate a fighting-retreat to established fallback positions at the River Rhine. This is partly why we can look at our history and see inventions such as the Honest John Rocket, Davy Crockett recoilless munition, ADMs, MADMs, and the Mk-54 SADM, essentially the suitcase nuke. These atomic weapons were the initial answer to halting Soviet armor formations chugging westward (This period in time also spurned the creation of the M1 Abrams MBT, the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, the A-10 Thunderbolt II, the F-117 Nighthawk, Star Wars, and many more). An additional factor complicating NATO’s presumed ability to halt a Soviet advance and form a swift counterattack was the reported increasing lethality of Soviet Air Defenses, which made the probability of employing a fighting retreat more likely as the Cold War progressed and weapons systems became increasingly sophisticated. I believe that a reasonable conclusion can be made that though the Berlin Brigade was combat equipped and mission capable, the expectation would be to fight in place and collapse inward with French and British forces in Western Berlin, breaking out westward when tactically feasible.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/sdcn6k/how_would_the_russian_public_protect_themselves/ | sdcn6k | 3 | t3_sdcn6k | How would the Russian public protect themselves against a Nuclear threat during the Cold War? | We hear a lot about the United State's methods of protecting the public in case of a nuclear attack (building fallout shelters, production of a vast number of public information films, 'duck and cover' etc.), but what was it like for the public in Russia? Were their methods of protection the same or vastly different? And how did the government actually spread this information to the public? | 4 | 0.76 | null | false | 1,643,221,436 | [
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"body": "You might find these threads useful:\n\n* [What was the Soviet publics point of view during the Cold War in regards to fear of Nuclear Weapons? Did they have fallout shelters and the sort?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rzaoh4/what_was_the_soviet_publics_point_of_view_during/)\n\n* [Did Soviet children have an equivalent to \"duck and cover\" education?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/lvxrpx/did_soviet_children_have_an_equivalent_to_duck/)\n\nThe short summary is that they did (post-Stalin) have public fallout shelters (not private ones like the US encouraged), they did have Civil Defense messaging and classroom courses dedicated to it, and they basically used similar methods (except with much more emphasis on state-built shelters, versus the US emphasis on private individual shelters).",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rrdm52/i_am_a_us_soldier_stationed_in_west_germany/ | rrdm52 | 7 | t3_rrdm52 | I am a U.S. soldier stationed in West Germany during the Cold War. A smattering of small-scale nuclear warheads were just detonated, I am irradiated, the Soviets are coming. What drugs am I given to keep in combat shape? | What sort of drug cocktail should a soldier expect in the event of a Soviet invasion? What will the effects be?
Will their be any long term (permanent) side-effects? | 0 | 0.47 | null | false | 1,640,799,196 | [
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"body": "I've never heard of any kind of \"drug cocktail\" that would do what you are talking about. In general, if you were suffering from symptoms of radiation exposure, those would be treated in a medical facility. Depending on the severity of the exposure, those symptoms might be quite mild and easily treatable (like gastrointestinal distress, for which there are many medications to treat) or might be severe and life-threatening (and require hospitalization, or just render you totally incapacitated). If you are interested in the doctrine on this, [the NATO Handbook on the Medical Aspects of NBC Defensive Operations](https://irp.fas.org/doddir/army/fm8-9.pdf) from 1996 is probably essentially the same as what the 1980s procedures would be, and goes into great detail. \n\nGames like _Fallout_ aside, there is no magic bullet medicine that will make you recover from, or avoid, exposure to ionizing radiation. The closest one gets are things like potassium iodide, which are useful if you know you are going to be exposed to fresh fission products, because they will prevent your body from absorbing I-131 into your thyroid; that can help, if you know in advance that fresh fission products are coming your way, but I-131 is only one fission product of note and so this is not a \"universal\" solution. Note that the above-linked manual makes clear that NATO guidance did _not_ include the stocking of such things. \n\nThe way to avoid ionizing radiation exposure is to not be around when the nuke goes off, or to have enough matter between you and the radiation source that most of it gets absorbed by it. If you ended up in a situation where you were exposed to a likely-fatal amount of radiation (say, 5 Sv/500 rad), you might still have some combat effectiveness in you for awhile — it takes VERY high exposures to render a soldier near-instantly incapacitated, much higher than fatal levels — but it is going to degrade over the next few hours and days and then you will be just another casualty of this war. This sort of thing was taken into account by planners on both sides for tactical nuclear warfare, as they intended to expose the other soldiers to high-enough levels that they would be rendered essentially incapacitated (this is what radiation-enhanced weapons — the so-called \"neutron bomb\" — were intended to do; they weren't trying to kill troops _slowly_, but _very quickly_). \n\nAny exposure over 1 Sv/100 rad comes with likely radiation sickness, and an increased cancer rate if you survive it, along with a number of other common long-term effects like cataracts. Exposures under 1 Sv/100 rad have probably no acute, immediate effects, but do have a likely small increase in lifetime cancer risk. Again, that wouldn't be that relevant for your scenario — the Soviets don't care about your lifetime cancer risk, and let's be honest, if you are in a shooting war with the Soviets the odds of you dying of a long-term cancer are pretty low, because your life expectancy is probably going to be in the range of hours anyway at that point, from other factors.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/noxs2b/was_the_decline_of_soviet_union_inevitable_what/ | noxs2b | 10 | t3_noxs2b | Was the decline of Soviet union inevitable? What were the factors that caused the end of cold war? | Can somebody relate George Keenan's article to the disintegration of USSR? | 38 | 0.87 | null | false | 1,622,446,920 | [
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"body": "Standard historian opening: nothing in history is inevitable. Things only look inevitable with the benefit of hindsight. Anyhoo! My answer below comes from my knowledge as Cold War historian, not a Soviet specialist. I hope that it goes some way towards answering your question. Regarding your query about George Kennan, I'm afraid you'll need to be more specific about which article you're referring to! He was a prolific writer and thinker, and produced a vast body of work.\n\nThe Cold War ended because of a) a group of reformers in the USSR; b) changes to Soviet policy (at home and abroad); c) and the efforts of millions of people in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The Soviets finally abandoned the war in Afghanistan, released their grip on Eastern European 'satellite states', and allowed the independence of the Soviet republics. Senior Soviet officials (especially Mikhail Gorbachev) also made some pretty remarkable (in the context of what had gone before) concessions in terms of their attempts to halt (and potentially reverse) the nuclear arms race. The Cold War ended when it did and how it did because of series of events that brought into power a Soviet leader with a radically different mind-set, allied to the pre-existing demands for change that had sweeping through Eastern Europe for quite some time (indeed, it's possible to argue that these demands had always been there, but by the 1980s they were being voiced more fully and by a greater proportion of the population). The combination of reform from the top and 'revolution from below' (although to what extent events in Eastern Europe were 'revolutions from below' is something that needs to be analysed for each individual case, e.g.: the manifest differences between what happens in Poland and East Germany) were what brought the Cold War to a (largely) peaceful conclusion.\n\nAs détente staggered towards collapse in the mid to late 1970s, so too did the Soviet dream. Although the USSR still remained a superpower in terms of its nuclear arsenal and gigantic conventional forces, it lagged behind the USA in pretty much every other measure of military power. The USSR was also being seriously hampered by a number of internal factors:\n\n1. It was led by a group of ageing, sick old men, wedded to increasingly outdated Marxist-Leninist dogma. Leonid Brezhnev died in November 1982, to be succeed by former KGB chief Iiuri Andropov who died in February 1984, who was then succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko who died in March 1985. At the top, there was no innovation or desire for any kind of change to the increasingly untenable and unstable status quo.\n2. The Soviet economy was in a truly terrible state, as the military-industrial defence complex absorbed vast amount of capital and resources. Consumer goods were sparse, queues for food common, and it had become clear to millions of Soviet citizens that Moscow’s tales of how things were much worse in the west were nothing more than obfuscation at best, outright lies at worst.\n3. Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe were becoming increasingly restive, with demands for greater political, social, and cultural freedoms. And even further afield, Afghanistan was a running sore, consuming personnel and resources in the seemingly unwinnable war against the mujahedeen.\n\nIn the mid-1980s, some truly dramatic changes took place. The most important in terms of national leadership was the ascent of Mikhail Gorbachev to the top position in the Soviet Union. This was coupled to US president Ronald Reagan’s increasingly conciliatory language and actions, a radical departure from the confrontational tone of his first term in office.\n\nIt became clear to the Soviet politburo that they could not continue with the merry-go-round of leadership, with ill old men continually reaching the top and then dying in short order. On March 11, 1985, one day after Konstantin Chernenko's death, Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and leader of the USSR. Prior to to coming to power, Gorbachev had been identified by Western leaders – particularly the UK's Margaret Thatcher – as a high Soviet official that they could work with. Setting aside dogma, Gorbachev was willing to debate and discuss in good faith.\n\nImportantly, Gorbachev came to power as a reformer, not a revolutionary. His reformist policies can be summed up in two words. Glasnost was his policy of openness, increased transparency with Soviet government, and a willingness to tolerate dissent and discussion. Perestroika was reform of the USSR’s politics and economy, but within a socialist system. This last bit is crucial, as it was not Gorbachev’s intention to turn the USSR into a capitalist state or to see it cease to exist. Most importantly of all, Gorbachev was keen to engage in constructive talks with the United States, and he found a willing partner in Reagan. Gorbachev offered concessions that were even more radical than outside observers could have predicted.\n\nMoreover, his implicit and then explicit renunciation of the Brezhnev Doctrine (the Soviet right to militarily intervene if communist rule in satellite states was threatened), his willingness to allow domestic debate about reform, and his openness to new ways of thinking sent a powerful message that this was not the same old same old Soviet Union. Indeed, his inaction when it came to the changes that swept Eastern Europe in the late 1980s (end of communist rule in Poland, for example) said more than any amount of explicit statements and speeches.\n\nWhat happened from the late 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall onwards was a series of events that cast a long shadow into the twenty-first century. Reagan’s successor George H W Bush agreed with his West German counterpart Helmut Kohl that a speedy push for German reunification was a wise move. Things moved with astonishing rapidity, with monetary, political, and military reunification being agreed in short order. With the 1990 reunification, the whole of Germany could finally be made part of the European project. With the Maastricht Treaty's conclusion in 1992, the European Community metamorphosed into the European Union, with a reunified Germany as a key component.\n\nPerhaps even more dramatic than Germany's reunification was the USSR’s collapse. Gorbachev’s willingness to let the states of eastern Europe go their own way predictably (with a degree of hindsight!) led to the USSR's constituent republics demanding their right to self-determination. Weakened by economic decline and ever deeper political divisions at both the centre and the periphery of Soviet power, high officials in the Kremlin could do little to avoid this. What was remarkable about the USSR’s collapse is its speed and its (mostly) peaceful nature. First to go were the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. After a futile attempt to keep them on board, the Baltic states went their own way and achieved independence.\n\nThis led to significant domestic criticism of Gorbachev from harder-line communists who blamed him for ‘losing’ Eastern Europe and giving away what remained of Soviet power. After a failed hard-line coup in August 1991, Gorbachev just couldn't salvage the reformed Soviet regime or get any kind of agreement for a looser confederation. The Russian leader Boris Yeltsin and his allies – who had been instrumental in defeating the August coup – won out, and in November the CPSU was banned and in December, the USSR was superseded by the short-lived Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The nations that had made up the Soviet Union now went merrily on their own ways, to varying degrees. The Cold War was over, as one side simply ceased to exist.\n\nIn the end, what role did the high level leaderships in the USA and USSR play in bringing about the Cold War’s end? US presidents – Reagan and Bush – played an important, but crucially secondary role. Reagan became more conciliatory in his second term, but Gorbachev revolutionised the USSR’s foreign policy. George Bush supported the Soviet leader, but his generally cautious approach towards events in central and eastern Europe was overshadowed by Gorbachev’s manifest boldness. The changes to Soviet policy were of a greater magnitude – and were far more painful for the USSR as a whole – than were any changes to US policy. The Cold War ended when it did because of series of events that brought into power and Soviet leader with a radically different mind-set. Once in power, Gorbachev drew upon ideas that were perhaps not necessarily that radical in a broader, global sense but were fundamentally radical within the framework of what had gone before in the Soviet Union. These ideas permitted the inauguration of conceptual and systemic change on the domestic and international scenes. Coupled to the vocal desire for changes in Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Romania, and elsewhere, the Cold War’s end fundamentally came from the east, not from the west.\n\nHope this answers your question.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/mstacl/what_is_the_height_of_the_cold_war/ | mstacl | 7 | t3_mstacl | What IS the "Height of the Cold War?" | I feel like whenever I see something talking about the Cold War, regardless of which event or year, it's referred to as the "Height of the Cold War." At this point it's more like the Cold War is a plateau. What does that even mean and why is it so frequently used? | 170 | 0.97 | null | false | 1,618,675,000 | [
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"body": "The difficulty here is in periodizing the Cold War. Did it start in 1945, 1947, 1917? One can argue about these things, but given that it is not an actual formal conflict, any answer you pick is going to be in the service of one argument or another, and not a \"natural category.\" (Even formal conflicts suffer from this, as an aside — did World War II start when Germany invades Poland, or when the Japanese invade China?) Saying when the Cold War _ended_ is in some ways easier (even then, there are different dates: 1989, 1991, etc.), but there's also a lot of \"in between\" that becomes worth differentiating. Some historians have a \"Cold War I\" (1940s-1960s) and \"Cold War II\" (1980s) separated by detente. But even that's a little misleading (a lot of the policies we associate with the surge of Cold War activity in the early 1980s had its origins in the 1970s, understandably). \n\nUsually when someone means \"the height of the Cold War\" they are trying to emphasize the 1950s or early 1960s. We're talking about the period between McCarthyism (1953 or so, depending on how tied you want to make it to McCarthy himself) and the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962). You could think of it as a \"long 1950s,\" which starts in the late 1940s (e.g., HUAC, the first Soviet atomic test, the Korean War, McCarthyism) and continues through the beginnings of detente in the early 1960s. This is a period in which \"the Cold War\" as a concept was overt and many of its more salient aspects (like the Red Scare and nuclear fear) were at their peak. \n\nThere are of course issues one can take with this periodization — as with _all_ periodizations — and the US-centric view of it is one of those. Even within a US-centric view, you could make arguments that detente had plenty of Cold War peaks as well (Vietnam, anyone?). But this is usually what is meant by the phrase, used to differentiate it from detente and the late Cold War.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/oe2v88/to_what_extent_did_constructions_of_western_and/ | oe2v88 | 5 | t3_oe2v88 | To what extent did constructions of "western" and "eastern" Europe exist before the Cold War? | I have been studying Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) academically for many years now, but mostly in the contemporary context. One thing that occupies me is the east/west dichotomy that was ever-present during the Cold War, and persists up to this day to a large extent. I'm especially interested in how this divide is constructed and problematic, but also evolving as time moves on since 1989. (I'll be using the terms western and eastern Europe for convenience, but with appreciation for it being problematic.)
Hence I wondered how far back this construction of a divide goes. I am aware that in some aspects, the pre-Cold War history of CEE is notably different from western Europe. Before WW2, the CEE region saw a lot of new (or returning) states in contrast to the established and continuous states in western Europe. Before WW1, most of CEE was governed by the three major empires - again in contrast to some western European countries and empires which were mostly colonial overseas. On the other hand, however, there was some discussion in Yalta where to draw the Iron Curtain and on which side some countries would fall. The line wasn't as obvious at the time as it seems now, it seems.
So my three questions would be: (1) to what extent did ideas of 'western' and 'eastern' Europe exist before the Cold War? (2) how clear was this divide on the continent back in those days? Was it as 'categorical' as in later time periods, or more diffuse? (3) In particular, I am interested in how countries close to the Cold War-era Iron Curtain were viewed in those times, of course insofar they 'existed' at all. Especially Hungary (having been at the head of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), Greece (geographically and historically Balkan, but since WW2 included in 'the West'), Finland and the Baltics (a history of both Russian Empire and Baltic/Scandinavian ties). | 76 | 0.93 | null | false | 1,625,473,802 | [
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"body": "I won't be able to answer your question directly, but I will point towards a book that should answer your title question: *Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment*, Larry Wolff, 1996. It discusses the creation of Easter Europe in contrast to the western area of Europe and its parallel with the previous North-South divide.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/sh36no/to_what_extent_did_the_us_publicize_their_nuclear/ | sh36no | 2 | t3_sh36no | To what extent did the US publicize their nuclear weapons testing during the Cold War? We’re these intended to be threats against the USSR? | The end of the movie Dr. Strangelove is a sequence of nuclear bomb detonations. After ending the testing memorandum of 1958 in 1961, did the US begin widely releasing this footage to the public? Were they meant to be seen by the Soviet Union for deterrence? | 2 | 0.67 | null | false | 1,643,641,225 | [
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"body": "The US had a complicated relationship between weapons testing and publicity. Its earliest test, Trinity, was of course done in Top Secret, and footage was only released after the bombing of Hiroshima so that people (Americans and otherwise) could understand what the atomic bomb was (whereas footage of the Hiroshima bombing itself was not). Its first postwar nuclear test series, Operation Crossroads, was open to guests of many nations, including the USSR. But after that it became much more withdrawn about its efforts for many years, because it became more concerned with developmental testing (testing new designs) and what those tests revealed said much about the state of the US arsenal. So while they announced the existence of nuclear weapons test series (they are hard to \"hide\"), they released very few photographs or information about the tests themselves, such as when they were being detonated and their yields. They attempted to keep the results of Operation Ivy (1952), the first H-bomb test, a total secret (to limited success), but after the first H-bomb fallout accident in 1954 (Castle Bravo), they released a lot of the Ivy Mike footage (because they weren't willing to yet release anything about the Bravo footage).\n\nBy the 1950s they were also testing in Nevada, and those were visible from nearby cities like Las Vegas, and there were even an area set aside near the test site where news organizations could film the tests from afar (\"News Knob\"). The information released about these tests could range from very minimal to very extensive depending on the specific goal of the publicity; the famous test of the Genie missile above the heads of several military men (and a camera man) was highly publicized because it was about showing the United States citizens that high-altitude, low-yield weapons used for defensive purposes could be done relatively safely. \n\nOver the course of the 1950s, they did occasionally decide to release certain clips of nuclear tests from earlier periods. These releases were generally highly-selective and for that reason, if you track these kinds of things, you see the same footage over and over again (despite there being much more footage than this created). So some of the footage was released quite widely, but most of it was not. Such was generally in line with the all-or-nothing the US approach to nuclear secrecy; they either decided something was safe enough to give to _everyone_, or they kept it under very tight wraps. \n\nUS testing was certainly seen by those who did it as a form of deterrence in and of itself (a vigorous testing program was seen as providing credibility, aside from the benefits it gave to stockpile development), but I think that assuming they released the footage as part of a concerted deterrence campaign against the USSR is probably giving the people in charge of releasing it (the Atomic Energy Commission) too much credit. They did not generally think or act in big, strategic, geopolitical ways. They made nukes and tested nukes and, if they thought it was safe to do so, released stuff. That was part of their legal charter and part of their normal operating procedures. \n\nAs for Stranglove, the tests shown in it are indicative of what I mean by some things being released extensively if redundantly. They are really only showing 5 or so different tests, cut up to look like many more explosions than it is (Crossroads Baker, which was a very distinctive-looking underwater test, makes up nearly half of it, from different times of its detonation).",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rlzmtt/would_charleston_wv_have_been_targeted_by_soviet/ | rlzmtt | 3 | t3_rlzmtt | Would Charleston, WV have been targeted by Soviet nuclear bombs during the cold war? | I always heard as kid Charleston was a very likely target due to the Yeager airport and the large DuPont chemical factory as-well as many other manufacturing plants. Is there any truth to this. Im sure actual targets are still classified. | 3 | 1 | null | false | 1,640,157,052 | [
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"body": "We don't have authoritative data on Soviet nuclear targeting during the Cold War. However, US planners for Civil Defense purposes assumed that essentially every airport was a potential target (because they could be used for supporting bomber operations) and that large industrial facilities were also possibly targets. The 1990 edition of FEMA's _Risks and Hazards: A State by State Guide_, which is evolved from these kinds of assessments, has at least three potential ground zeros in the immediate Charleston area, [as you can see here](https://www.webpal.org/SAFE/state/WV/wv-nu.jpg). Whether these reflect actual Soviet targeting strategies and priorities is not known. (The locations of those ground zeroes are not arbitrary, but it can take some work to figure out what they are meant to be. Airports, industrial facilities, military facilities, and power plants are all common \"targets\" in this model.)",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/mmug6i/was_able_archer_83_really_as_dangerous_as_it_is/ | mmug6i | 7 | t3_mmug6i | Was Able Archer 83 really as dangerous as it is often made out to be ? It is usually regarded as one of the closest times the Cold War went nuclear. How true is this ? | The view that the 1983 Able Archer NATO exercises were very closing in causing a USSR-NATO nuclear war has been widely known for sometime now but a February 2021 report by the National Security Archive seems to confirm that it was more dangerous than we initially believed. However, Simon Miles, a Duke University professor says that the claims that the scares of the 1983 Able Archer exercises was only "mythical" and argues it was not as dangerous as it is often claimed to be. So was he right in that Able Archer was heavily sensationalised or it was truly a legitimate possibility of nuclear war on par with the Cuban Missile Crisis ? | 75 | 0.96 | null | false | 1,617,896,272 | [
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"body": "Previously, there have been several good answers on Able Archer [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5g6yxp/did_natos_able_archer_83_exercise_nearly_spark_an/) and [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/991tfl/soviet_response_to_able_archer_83_and_pershing_ii/) by /u/restricteddata that conform with my general understanding of the incident and [another fairly recent one](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/iwwkyv/how_dangerous_was_able_archeroperation_ryan/) by /u/yourusernamemustbeb that falls much more in line with the new scholarship that Miles has brought to the table.\n\nI'm not current enough on the debate here to add too much more - I actually just picked up the Miles book last week, since it's one that I've meant to read for a while and of all things the introduction of KAL 007 into *For All Mankind*'s alternate timeline finally prompted me to buy it - but the one thing that I think is still pretty well supported regardless of the more recent scholarship is that the after-incident reviews did have a meaningful effect on Reagan's thought process about just how much he wanted to escalate things. While the perception of the risk involved may indeed have been out of whack with what was actually going on, it's pretty hard to argue that rightly or wrongly, the principals of US foreign policy didn't incorporate that assessment into their strategy afterwards.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/p0za6k/why_did_the_usa_support_right_wing_dictatorships/ | p0za6k | 6 | t3_p0za6k | Why did the USA support right wing dictatorships during the Cold War? Was it necessary? | I know the purported reason for that is in order to prevent the rise of communist regimes. My question is, didn’t the US government consider alternatives to supporting brutal dictatorships all over the world? Didn’t they think it would come back to bite them in the backside with a rise of anti-US feelings worldwide, and did no US President ever have moral and ethical reserves about engaging in that sort of foreign policy?
Couldn’t the US government have simply promoted fair, open and ethical governments, or could they not have befriended communist regimes in order to isolate them from the Soviet Union and then put pressure on them to behave ethically with their own populations? | 14 | 0.81 | null | false | 1,628,507,142 | [
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"body": "A pretty big question being asked here (and a bit loaded) but I will try to answer it, at least to the best of my ability while on a smoke break. \n\n\nShort answers \nWhy?: As you stated to prevent the rise of communist regimes (though more accurately: Soviet aligned/sympathetic governments) \n\n\nWas it necessary?: This is essentially a counterfactual question that cannot actually be answered beyond speculation. \n\n\nLonger answer: The cold war was very much a conflict of influence and spheres of influence, similar to the imperial days of old. It was beneficial for each power to have as many countries and people in their sphere as possible for economic, military, and diplomatic reasons. As such the two powers had many interests in foreign countries and their conduct. For example the Soviet Union had a great interest in a buffer zone between it and the western powers, hence the Warsaw Pact/establishment of communist countries in Eastern Europe, and crackdowns on any popular sentiment or resistance efforts which may undermine the political status quo of this buffer zone (IE the Hungarian revolt of '56, or East Germany in '53). While these actions were quite widely condemned and criticized in the west, the west themselves took very similar measures on multiple occasions. \n\n\nFor example: the Guatemalan coup d'etat of the 1954, which was sponsored by the US and overthrew a democratically elected president in favor of a right-wing dictatorship. The reasons for this were many but the primary root motive was President Arbenz land reform campaign. Basically Arbenz planned to nationalize and redistribute unused agricultural land being held by many private estates and most notably by the United Fruit Company (now known as Chiquita) to the farmers of Guatemala who were largely poor and landless. This was against US interests in two-ways: firstly it was against the interests of United Fruit Company and thus would negatively affect the finances of a major US corporate interest. Secondly a land redistribution campaign, while not inherently communist, was generally a more left-leaning policy/position. This meant that, in the eyes of the US government, Arbenz could potentially be sympathetic to the USSR/could realign itself to be in the sphere of the USSR. This would mean a country in the Soviet sphere just south of the US itself, which was a nightmare in the eyes of the US (hence their reaction to the Cuban revolution a few years later). Rather than risk this change in the diplomatic status quo, a right-wing dictatorship which was ardently anti-communist would be preferable since Arbenz was popular and democratically elected. \n\n\nTo put it simply: if the US could stop the rise of soviet influence/socialist popularity through more gentle means, then it would (IE funding the conservative parties in the Italian election of 1948, or funding US aligned countries with the Marshall plan) then it would. If more harsh means were needed to keep countries/people \"in-line\" as it were, then those would be used too (IE Guatemala, Chilean coup d'etat, funding anti-communist death squads in Latin America). This was largely a matter of pragmatism (carrot vs. stick) and is not unique to the US, the Soviets did so too only more openly in many instances. Much of the US interference and actions taken against the third world have only come to public consciousness after the end of the cold war, most Americans at the time would have little-to-no knowledge of the US role in the Guatemalan coup for example (assuming they knew that anything happened in Guatemala at all). \n\n\nI don't really have time to go into more specific details at the moment, but let me know if you have more specific questions about this that I could elaborate on rather than just an overview of US practices during the Cold War.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/jk0pzl/the_assassination_of_franz_ferdinand_is/ | jk0pzl | 11 | t3_jk0pzl | The assassination of Franz Ferdinand is considered to be the event that led to WWI. WWI led to WWII. WWII led to the Cold War. Etc. Some of the assassins lived well into the 1980s/1990s. Did any of them regret their actions? Did they comment on how consequential their actions were to world history? | Gavrilo Princip, the man who actually killed Ferdinand, died while WWI was still ongoing. But many lived for decades afterward. Vaso Čubrilović lived until 1990. Cvjetko Popović lived until 1984. Did any of them ever say "Maybe we went too far" or something like that? | 286 | 0.95 | null | false | 1,603,934,052 | [
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/r7lbq6/what_was_the_game_plan_for_people_fleeing_into/ | r7lbq6 | 2 | t3_r7lbq6 | What was the game plan for people fleeing into West Berlin during the Cold War? | I mean, I get that they were trying to escape Communism and all that, but why were they trying to get into Berlin of all places? It was completely closed off, it doesn't seem like they would be able to go anywhere else except one city. | 5 | 0.78 | null | false | 1,638,490,559 | [
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"body": " The position of the West Germany (FRG) was that all Germans could claim FRG citizenship and that Bonn was the temporary, legitimate government of Germany until a final peace treaty was signed between the German government and the Allies. This meant that any GDR citizen who made it to FRG territory could apply for citizenship in the FRG. \n\nThis left West Berlin as the easiest FRG territory for a refugee to access. GDR rail-lines and other transport networks did run through the divided city. Some refugees could buy tickets and flee during the trains' stopover in Berlin. Additionally, the large expansive nature of Berlin's urban geography made it easy to walk into West Berlin. There were a good deal of so-called \"*Sachsenganger*\", migrant GDR workers whose jobs were in West Berlin but were residents of the GDR, prior to 1961. Most refugees that reached West Berlin applied for asylum citizenship and were flown out of the city via the established air corridors. The erection of the Wall ended this migrant labor and also the last \"easy' egress for an aspiring refugee. The Wall violently and at great costs to East German prestige did resolve the refugee crisis. \n\nNonetheless, crossing the Wall still was the best option for fleeing the GDR compared to the inner German border. The trickle of post-61 refugees would try both avenues, but Berlin remained disproportionately popular area for escape. The Wall was certainly a deadly strip of territory, but it was still nowhere near as militarized as the inner German border. Even though it was officially an \"anti-fascist defensive rampart,\" the Wall was a tad less daunting than the other border available for refugees. The Western Berlin brigades were not much of a threat to the GDR and the Wall was less militarized than the inner border. The latter's fortifications were not only meant to stop refugees, but also to prevent a NATO drive into the GDR.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4jkybw/during_cold_war_both_kgb_and_cia_had_high_ranking/ | 4jkybw | 222 | t3_4jkybw | During cold war both KGB and CIA had high ranking moles inside their organisations. Is it known which side did better job at infiltrating their opponent and getting sensitive information as cold war progressed? | I often see documentaries about high ranking spies inside America, but rarely about spies in USSR. I'm curious how balance of power shifted during cold war. Was there ever situation where one agency was dominating and other "under siege"? | 4,418 | 0.93 | null | false | 1,463,402,290 | [
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"body": "The two things to consider here are the Soviet dominance of human intelligence and a far superior Soviet counterintelligence units. So I will answer in two parts.\n\nSoviet human intelligence vastly outpaced the CIA during the early to mid Cold War. The Soviet Union recruited young, ideologically motivated, foreign nationals (those in target states) with a high potential to reach important government positions. When many of these agents reached those positions it became clear that the CIA, MI5, and MI6 were not even under siege but instead had already become thoroughly penetrated. Author Wilderness of Mirrors, David C Martin says that \"[the CIA] was utterly ignorant of Soviet espionage operations.\" Agents in the employ of the Soviet Union often installed themselves in the organization's core structure before rigorous internal counterintelligence programs were instituted. This means that the infiltrators were trusted members of the team and with this status that effectively exempted them from scrutiny, the Soviet Union knew of the vast majority of high profile intelligence operations against them before they could even leave the planning board. A good example of this is Operation Gold, a plan to dig a tunnel underneath East Berlin in order to tap regional Soviet military cables. But before the tunnel was even made, a man named George Blake compromised the operation, effectively opening up the plan and the agencies behind it to manipulation through misinformation. It is my view that the CIA was only kept in the game by strong counterintelligence agents like James Jesus Angleton and William King Harvey, but mostly Soviet walk-ins or defectors. Many of the CIA's counterintelligence victories were achieved through defectors like Walter Krivitsky and Michael Goleniewski.\n\nIn terms of counterintelligence programs, the early Soviet model was also far superior. Naturally, secret police, surveillance, and counterintelligence all come easily with a totalitarian, autocratic government. This enabled Red Army units like SMERSH (a name that amounts to \"Death to spies\" in Russian) to have free reign in convicting and killing spies as they were created as an external organ to existing Soviet military/intelligence structure. They were so effective because they targeted any threat to information security, both real and imaginary which resulted in the executions of many innocents.\n\nSo, as a brief answer to your question: during the early Cold War, the balance of power in intelligence (and counterintelligence) heavily favored the Soviets.\n\nSources:\nVadim Birstein's SMERSH,\nDavid C. Martin's Wilderness of Mirrors,\nMichael Warner's The Rise and Fall of Intelligence\n",
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"body": "Related question - did the moles every uncover eachother? i.e. KGB mole within the CIA got told about the CIA's mole in the KGB and reported that?\n\n",
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"body": "Follow-up question: Is it fair to say that a Soviet agent would have an easier time integrating him or herself into US society and organizations? A recent immigrant from anywhere in Europe would be relatively unusual, depending on what part of the United States in question. However, wouldn't an American stick out like a sore thumb in Russia? Moreover, the (relatively) more open U.S. society seems like it would be easier to infiltrate. Even if we're talking about strictly the CIA/KGB, it seems that the CIA would be at least more ethnically diverse and open to application and promotion for \"outsiders,\" whereas finding an Russian with an axe to grind would be more difficult. ",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/q7ijml/cold_war_archival_research_helplooking_for_the/ | q7ijml | 5 | t3_q7ijml | Cold War Archival Research Help/Looking for the Communications and Electronics Digest | This was a text published by the USAF during the Cold War. Does anyone know how to access it? Here is an example of a title page. I am a PhD student who would be grateful for any help! | 3 | 1 | null | false | 1,634,152,890 | [
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/nnubx8/did_eisenhower_ever_show_any_regret_for_giving/ | nnubx8 | 7 | t3_nnubx8 | Did Eisenhower ever show any regret for “giving” the Soviets Berlin and East Germany, after the Cold War started? | 14 | 0.84 | null | false | 1,622,315,838 | [
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"body": "I have never read any such publicly stated regret, although my study of Eisenhower focuses more on his military life before he became President. \n\nBut everything I've seen shows that for the rest of his life he maintained the same story about the post-war division of Europe-- that it wasn't up to him. Those lines were drawn by Roosevelt, Marshall, Churchill and Stalin at the Yalta and Tehran conferences, while Eisenhower stayed in the field to direct the actual military campaigns in North Africa, then Italy, then Europe. \n\nHowever, even by 1948, when he published his memoir, [Crusade in Europe](https://www.worldcat.org/title/crusade-in-europe/oclc/394251), Eisenhower had been asked this question so many times before that he discusses at length why the capture of Berlin was not a priority for the western Allied forces. Briefly, they are: \n\n1. Berlin is located in east Germany, and legitimately fell in the agreed-upon Soviet zone. The closest Ike came during the war to commenting on this was to push Marshall several times to insist that the Occupation Forces be set up in a Quadpartite four-power unified commission to deal with any problems or disputes. He was mostly successful in this.\n2. Eisenhower pushed for, and received, permission to communicate directly with Stalin about military matters. The prevailing command culture in the US Army at that time was that commanders should be given a wide latitude to perform their tasks, and if they did not produce results, they were replaced. This was a frustrating contrast with the British system, where higher level commanders routinely expected to be micro-managed by the civilian government on the smallest matters, including troop deployment. So Ike did communicate directly with Stalin, but was very careful to confine his messages to purely military matters, because every single message was carefully scrutinized by both sides and Eisenhower was always criticized every time he sent any message to Stalin, even though all of the messages were exchanges of tactical or strategic intelligence, or the setting up of recognition signals and boundary lines for the eventual east-west meetup of forces. \n3. Eisenhower personally felt that there were at least five other **military** goals more important than the capture of Berlin: \n 1. The destruction of the Wehrmacht and SS military forces west of the Rhine before any penetration into Germany itself. He did not want to leave any troops behind him (except for the besieged channel ports which held out to the end of the war, but all of them could be invested by a single division-- the 66th). \n 2. Capture of the Ruhr region to eliminate Germany's industrial capacity to wage war. Similarly, over-running the V-1 and V-2 launch sites that were terror bombing the UK.\n 3. Capture of Antwerp, which Ike felt was the only port capable of fully supplying the 79 divisions he believed he needed to invade the German homeland. This took longer than expected, especially taking the Scheldt river estuary which guarded the approaches to the port. \n 4. Allied generals were greatly disturbed by intelligence reports of the creation of a nation-wide Nazi terrorist network, the Werewolf Organization. They felt that the best way to avoid years of bloody occupation counter-insurgency battles was to capture the bulk of German territory in the west before this network could be fully organized. This appears to have succeeded. \n 5. Similarly, Ike was concerned at the German plans to create a \"National Redoubt\" in southern Bavaria that would provide a haven for armed Nazi forces to harass the allies indefinitely. He considered overrunning this region a more important priority than a US/British capture of Berlin, and directed troops from Italy and Southern France to make it their number one priority. This also worked. \n\nNormally I offer some other sources, but in this case the man you are asking about documented his thinking and decision at great length in the primary source, \"Crusade in Europe.\" Ike was himself an accomplished writer with a historian's soul, and he goes to great length to cite numerous military cables, messages, and battle orders from that time to substantiate every decision he made. Besides being one of the better military memoirs of all time, Crusade in Europe is still in print today, both hardcopy and easily accessible digital editions, and should be available from almost any library with a history section. If you want to know what Ike was thinking and how he justified himself to the future world, he wrote it all down very clearly. I think it is rightly considered the foundational text for understanding the war in western Europe.\n\nFinally, during the war itself, and even several years afterward, Ike felt that a closer, friendly relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union was possible. He hoped that a Cold War would not happen, and worked hard while still in uniform to maintain close ties with the Russians, even developing a personal friendship with Marshall Zhukov during the first years of the occupation. Also Eisenhower wasn't the type to second-guess himself, or to criticize the actions of his superiors who made those political decisions. He would have said he made the best decision he had at the time on the available information. \n\nI hope that answers some of the questions on what was going on to make Eisenhower act the way he did.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/qyuoll/why_did_the_us_let_china_fall_to_communism/ | qyuoll | 2 | t3_qyuoll | Why did the US let China fall to communism despite almost waging a half century Cold War against communism and the USSR? | I might be ignorant to it but I've never heard of a Chinese War or a Sino-American War that occurred after WW2. With the geopolitical issues America have today with China its kinda odd the US actively participated in proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam, Central America to prevent communism from spreading there yet let China go. | 4 | 0.61 | null | false | 1,637,500,300 | [
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"body": "The US under the early months of the Truman administration was certainly concerned with communism, but perhaps not to the same dramatic extent as what would come later in Korea and Vietnam. Something important to note is the idea of worldviews over time--US policymakers and the State Department was simply not as wedded to the idea that communism needed to be stopped everywhere regardless of strategic value. \n\nThe first thing to note is that the US was involved in the Chinese Civil War, from military advisors to supplying weapons to the KMT. Much of the US support infrastructure had its roots in US-KMT cooperation during WWII. However, there were early doubts about the effectiveness of the KMT and the virulent corruption in the Nationalist government. The CCP, on the other hand, was a plucky group of fighters which some US journalists (most notably Edgar Snow) lauded for their fighting ability against the Japanese. This is important to note: the KMT may not have been Communist, but their circle of admirers in the US was relatively small.\n\nUS military officials wanted to broker a truce between the CCP and KMT after WWII; an effort which failed by 1946. After that point, the KMT was always on the back foot, with the CCP --with its superior morale, support base, military efficacy, and bolstered by captured Japanese weapons and equipment--quickly taking cities and sending the KMT into a declining spiral in its ability to maintain a front line. \n\nThe US still provided some support in the form of military aid, transporting and training KMT troops, and even sending some troops to strategic areas in Shandong and Hebei Province to protect American property and facilitate the repatriation of Japanese nationals stuck in China. Most China experts on staff in the State Dept were highly (and rightfully) skeptical that more aid could turn the tide, given the level of corruption in the KMT government, poor military, and utter absence of popular support. After the election of the 1948, the Truman administration had essentially lost faith in Chiang's government completely and saw it as a lost cause, refusing to pour more money into a bottomless hole. Chiang and his govt subsequently flee to Taiwan. Essentially, Truman's foreign policy calculus was fairly straightforward: this was a Chinese Civil War where the US-supported side was clearly losing by a landslide, so there was not a strategic or rational reason to try and take a one in a million chance of averting the ultimate outcome.\n\nBut this final result of the war, with a Communist Chinese government in power, was politically devastating for Truman. \"Who Lost China?\" became a direct attack by US conservatives against the administration, in a moment that was increasingly governed by American anxiety about confrontation with the Soviet Union (the Soviets get their own A-bomb in 1949, which is very important in understanding why the Communist threat suddenly seemed so much more omnipotent for many Americans). China experts in the State Department and academia, who had rightfully pointed out the deficiencies in the KMT government and predicted eventual Communist victory, came under attack from conservatives, with some chased out from their positions. The false charges from Sen McCarthy that Owen Lattimore, a leading China expert in US academia, was a Soviet spy became a central example of how fear about Communism had begun to inflame anti-Communist sentiment in the US and clamp down on the range of views that were politically viable at the time.\n\nThe Chinese Civil War indirectly would promote future US interventions in other conflicts in Asia, including Korea, because the notion of a president being responsible for the \"fall\" of a non-communist state was set in place by the blame leveled at Truman for the defeat of the KMT. \n\nA good (and relatively simply written and enjoyable) account of US involvement in the Chinese Civil War is Kurtz-Phelan's The China Mission, which follows General Marshall's attempts to broker a peace and also charts much of the intricacies of US-KMT-CCP relations that I have briefly summarized here.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ops3j5/role_of_socialism_in_the_ussrs_developpement_from/ | ops3j5 | 5 | t3_ops3j5 | Role of socialism in the USSR'S developpement, from pre-WW1 to the end of the Cold War ? | So, someone just told me this on Reddit and I don't know how to feel. Have a look for yourselves :
> "A good example of how communism (or at least socialism) can be just as innovative, if not more innovative than capitalism, is the fact that the Soviet Union, which was incredibly poor before adopting socialism, ended up becoming a military superpower which was incredibly industrialized and won the space race."
I have a few questions about this. First of all, wasn't Russia already a pretty powerful nation before the revolution ? How feared was it amongst the european nations after the Vienna Congress and before the Revolution ?
Second, what was the role of socialism/communism in the build of the Russian army ? Was it really the new system that made them powerful or were there other factors present ? And were they as advanced as this guy says ?
That would be very much appreciated! Thanks! | 9 | 0.91 | null | false | 1,627,004,579 | [
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"body": "To answer this, I need to make a distinction between \"development\" and \"innovation\". \n\nI'll also mention a related answer on Soviet living standards I [wrote](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/on2i1c/how_did_standards_of_living_compare_between/) last week, but I'll try to summarize here.\n\nIt is absolutely true that the Russian Empire was accepted as a Great Power, and a military power. It also was undergoing a process of industrialization that started roughly around 1890, especially under the oversight of Sergei Witte. \n\nBut that doesn't mean it wasn't still a poor country. To repeat some figures historian Stephen Kotkin gives for around 1880: Russia was the fourth or fifth largest industrial power at the time (because of textiles), and was the largest agricultural producer, but these were mostly effects of its immense size - GDP per capita is estimated to have been at 20 percent of Britain's and 40 percent of Germany's. The average lifespan in the country was around 30, which was higher than British India (23), but lower than Britain (52), Japan (51) and Germany (49), and about the same as China's. It also had a literacy rate around 30 percent or so, which was equivalent to where Britain had been over a century previously. Easily nine-tenths of the people in the country lived rural, agricultural lives. \n\nEven with the industrialization and urbanization that happened from 1892 to 1913 or so, these standards were still the baseline that the Russian Empire was working with, and it's important to note that the period 1914 to 1927, with the First World War, Russian Revolution, and attendant famines and dislocations, there was significant *deurbanization* and *deindustrialization*. Don't quote me on this but I think the estimate for population decline in St. Petersburg over those years is something like 50% - a lot of people moved back to their ancestral villages because of war, revolution, and shortages. On top of this, it's worth noting that what would be the Soviet Union in 1922 did not include a lot of the more developed western parts of the former Russian Empire, such as the Baltics, Poland or Finland.\n\nSo when Soviet power was consolidated, they absolutely were focused on economic development, but first a big part of that development was *trying to get the economy back to its 1913 levels*. It did eventually surpass those levels but I think it's important to keep that historic context in mind.\n\nAnother point based off of this. The USSR was absolutely what we would today call a developing country. For its entire existence (and this frankly goes for the post Soviet states to this day) it was essentially looking to catch up to advanced economies. This is not an easy thing to do, and most developing countries tend to fall into what's called the \"Middle Income trap\" - in short, the easy part is to climb out of poverty to a middle income level of development, but much harder to push past that to the absolute forefront of developed economies. The economist Simon Kuznets once said that there are four types of economies: rich ones, poor ones, Japan and Argentina, with the implication that Japan was unique in going from a poor to rich country, and Argentina was unique in going from rich to poor. There really haven't been too many examples added to the Japan category except South Korea or Taiwan. Even taking things like HDI (which I discuss [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/om5pku/did_the_soviet_union_really_have_a_very_high/h5jpyae/)) which account for non-economic factors like life expectancy and education levels, the USSR was \"high\" but never at the highest levels of advanced economies, but rather at around the same levels as Mexico or Argentina. \n\nA further point is that while the Soviet economy achieved impressive growth levels, especially after 1945 (Robert Allen argues in *Farm to Factory* that the USSR was actually one of the most successful developing countries in the 20th century because of these growth rates), these rates steadily declined with each decade starting in the late 1960s. While \"stagnation\" can be overrated - the Soviet economy pretty much consistently grew every year until the late 1980s - it was growing at ever smaller rates, with ever smaller returns on capital investments. It was being surpassed by other countries such as [Japan itself](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/d6naax/by_1990_japans_gdp_surpassed_the_ussrs_did_the/f0vzoxj/) in this time as well. So while I think the idea of the Soviet command economy being a dysfunctional basketcase on the verge of inevitable collapse is overrated, pretty much everyone in the USSR with knowledge of the West was aware that the the country's living conditions simply were not catching up with advanced economies like those in Western Europe, let alone surpassing them (which Marxist-Leninism had said would inevitably happen). If anything, the gap was growing with the tech revolution in the 1970s and 1980s, and Khrushchev's prediction that the USSR would achieve full communism by 1980 became something of a bad joke. But that leads us next to innovation...",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pc0ci4/during_the_cold_war_how_aware_were_ordinary_us/ | pc0ci4 | 4 | t3_pc0ci4 | During the Cold War, how aware were ordinary US citizens and Latin Americans of the CIA’s role in Latin American politics? | I think this sounds like a stupid question but I think my perspective is blunted because of the sheer info I've read on it already.
For example, the CIA produced hundreds of radio stations, magazine publications and propaganda leaflets denouncing leftist groups in 1970s Chile. Did any ordinary Chileans question this sudden uptick in anticommunist propaganda in their daily life? Did they know the CIA specifically was behind them? Same applies to Argentina, Nicaragua, etc.
Additionally, were ordinary Americans generally aware of their country's role in the abuses of authoritarian Latin American regimes during those times? Or were the Archives of Terror and the declassification of Operation Condor documents in 1999 a genuine shock to the American public? | 4 | 0.71 | null | false | 1,629,987,173 | [
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"body": "I have previously found answers by /u/ainrialai and /u/aquatermain and /u/colloquialanachron for [Why did the US overthrow so many democratically elected governments in Latin America? And why did they replace those governments with fascist dictatorships instead of liberal democracies?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ihtjjn/why_did_the_us_overthrow_so_many_democratically/) that will be helpful to you.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/hdnm4p/did_the_cold_war_kill_the_ussr_was_its_demise/ | hdnm4p | 17 | t3_hdnm4p | Did the Cold War kill the USSR, was its demise inevitable as a result of its economic and political system, or was there another reason it fell apart? | The USSR fell apart in 1991 with a GDP of around $10,000 per capita PPP, and has reached about $30,000 per capita PPP today after stagnating throughout the 1990s.
​
I wonder whether it was communism that caused the USSR to fall apart? The communist ideology, as it was practiced in the USSR, included a centrally planned command economy and the lack of civil and political freedoms that was entailed under the Soviets. Perhaps those things caused the failure of the USSR (although the lack of political freedoms hasn't stopped the PRC).
​
On the other hand, perhaps competing with the US, with its head-start advantage from the get-go was what wore out the economy and caused the political union to fail in the end. The US had an economic advantage from the beginning, in 1917, when the Soviets took over Tsarist Russia. The cold war was expensive, what with the space program and the nuclear arsenal the USSR built up and all the other costs of competing.
​
What do we know about the cause of the fall of the USSR and whether it can be attributed to the socialist system or to competition with a competitor who was economically and technologically more advanced from the beginning? | 120 | 0.9 | null | false | 1,592,810,760 | [
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"body": "Repost of an older [answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/axu4i3/mikhail_gorbachev_is_viewed_as_a_hero_by_the/) I wrote on the subject:\n\n**PART I**\n\nGorbachev's reforms are ultimately responsible for the Soviet collapse, which saw the end of Soviet superpower status, a massive reduction in the Soviet military's size and strength, the unilateral evacuation of all territories in Central and Eastern Europe occupied at great human cost in the Second World War, and a rapidly declining economy fragmented into fifteen separate states. Much of the argument that the Soviet political system and economy needed reform needed change to avoid collapse came directly from him - the phrase \"Era of Stagnation\" to describe the Brezhnev years is actually a piece of Gorbachev's rhetoric.\n\nHowever there seems to be a strong case (made by Stephen Kotkin in Armageddon Averted), that while the Soviet economy was growing at ever slower rates, and increasingly unable to close the ever-present gap in living standards between the USSR and the West, probably could have continued to muddle on - there was no imminent danger of political and economic collapse in 1985.\n\nIt's also important to note that Gorbachev's reforms did not cause the collapse of the USSR on purpose, and Gorbachev was always committed to maintaining the union in some reformed shape under an economic system that was still socialist. However, his reforms both began to pick apart the centralized economy without really creating new institutions, which caused severe economic disruptions, and his political reforms unleashed new political movements outside his control, while all of these reforms antagonized more hardline members of the nomenklatura (party establishment). Ultimately he lost control of the situation.\n\nThe Soviet system was highly-centralized and governed in a top-down approach, and it was Gorbachev who put reforms into motion and also removed members of the Soviet government and Communist party who opposed reforms.\n\nGorbachev's period tends to get divided into roughly three periods: a period of reform, a period of transformation, and a period of collapse.\n\nThe period of reform lasted roughly from 1985 to 1988, in which Gorbachev and his supporters in the government (notably Eduard Shevardnadze, Gorbachev's foreign minister and the future President of Georgi, and Aleksandr Yakovlev, Gorbachev's ally on the Politburo and the intellectual driver of reforms) tried a mixture of moderate reforms and moral suasion to revitalize the Soviet economy as it was, echoing Khrushchev's reforms of 20 years previous. While the goal was a revitalization of Soviet society and the economy, there was a very strong focus on morality: this period notably featured the anti-alcoholism/prohibition campaign, and very public campaigns against corruption (Dmitry Furman called this a \"sort of Marxist Protestantism\").\n\nWhen these efforts did not secure the results that Gorbachev and his reformers desired, more far-reaching reforms were pursued in the 1988-1990 period. This is when Gorbachev made massive changes to Soviet foreign policy, such as withdrawing from Afghanistan in 1989, announcing unilateral cuts to military spending and forces at the UN in 1988, and more or less cutting the USSR's Eastern European satellite states in 1989. On the domestic sphere, this is when Gorbachev pushed through major political changes to the Soviet system, pushing through a new Congress of People's Deputies to be filled through semi-free elections, removing the Communist Party's monopoly of power and creating the office of President of the USSR for himself in 1990. This is also the period when glasnost (\"openness\", ie the lifting of censorship) took off, and these all were largely attempts to establish a new base of support for continued reforms once it became clear to Gorbachev that most of the Communist Party was uninterested in this.\n\nThese reforms ushered in the 1990-1991 chaos, at which point Gorbachev essentially lost control. Falling oil prices and the crackdown on alcohol sales (which were a massive part of the Soviet budget), plus Gorbachev's loosening of management and sales restrictions on state firms while maintaining most of their subsidies, plus plans for importing of new Western machine tools and technology to revitalize the economy, seriously destabilized the Soviet budget, and caused the government to turn to the printing presses to cover ever increasing deficits.",
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"body": "People rarely name a single cause for the collapse; Wikipedia alone lists 25 contributing factors, and the Cold War is just one of them. I'll try to show how complicated the situation really was.\n\nFirst of all, let's establish the timeline.\n\n* Previous crisis in the Cold War: 1979-1981\n* Gorbachev becomes the leader of the USSR: 1985\n* Gorbachev declares \"The Perestroika\": 1986-1987\n* Fall of the Eastern Bloc: 1989\n* Fall of the USSR: 1991\n\nThe Cold War was a long and complicated political game which had little to do with ideologies. It was a clash of two global empires. Both sides wanted to expand their political influence but avoid direct confrontation, because ever since the 1960s the nuclear arsenals were large enough to guarantee the \"mutual assured destruction\". This lead to a certain dynamic: the countries would try to de-escalate the confict, signing treaties and making amends, then someone would test the boundaries of the agreements, and sooner or later another crisis would be at hand. At this point the leaders would accuse each other of warmongering and a new phase would begin. The beginning of the 1980s saw such a \"hot\" phase. The USSR violated one of the previous agreements by invading Afganistan (the situation around that was complicated as well), after which the US immediately cancelled the ongoing work on another disarmament agreement and boycotted the Moscow Olympics; then in 1981 Reagan introduced anti-USSR sanctions for suppressing an insurrection in Poland and soon gave his famous speech about \"the Empire of evil\". It's important to note that on this iteration the US seemed to have an upper hand in the defense department: they started to heavily rely on cruise missiles, and Reagan famously declared a military space program named \"star wars\". Meanwhile the USSR was still stuggling economically after the 1970s era of stagnation.\n\nNaturally, after just a few years a need for de-escalation arose again (and this time the USSR was heavily interested in it, given the circumstances - and the fact that Afganistan essentially became the Soviet Vietnam). As early as in 1984 there was talk of making peace and finding diplomatic solutions. For instance, here's an account of Margaret Thatcher's parlay with Gorbachev (yet to become the president):\n\n*\"We were convinced that our system suited us best. The Soviet system no doubt suited them best. Accepting all this, it was essential in the interests of both peoples to try to diminish hostility and the level of armaments.\"* [(source)](https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/dc.html?doc=2755701-Document-01)\n\nAs you can see, it's a clear beginning of another \"thaw\"... and it also shows how little ideology really mattered.\n\nNow I have to say a few words about that ideology - communism itself. First of all, the regime was called \"socialism\": communism was believed to be the goal, the bright future of a perfect society (which would become reality if it weren't for those pesky Western imperialists and undesireable elements within society). But by the 1980s this ideology was a shell of its former self. Officials were still required to cite Marx and Lenin (Gorbachev's [speech](http://www.lib.ru/MEMUARY/GORBACHEV/doklad_xxvi.txt) from 1987, in the middle of Perestroika, is riddled with quotes from them despite a pretty clear message about democracy). But people mostly perceived this as an empty ritual. The regime was more of a bureaucracy than anything else; mottoes didn't really matter that much.\n\nWhat did matter, and that's where you're right in your assumptions, was planned economy. Earlier I mentioned an insurgence in Poland - it wasn't an isolated case. In fact there were two waves of political and economic crises in the Eastern Bloc, one in the 1970s and another one in the late 1980s. Economies were becoming increasingly inefficient, and markets had to be carefully reformed to make them more liberal. USSR itself wasn't an exception: it experienced shortages of most consumer items, and the industry was underperforming... and then, to top it off, in 1985 oil prices plummeted, and oil was as important for the USSR export as it is for the modern Russia.\n\nSo here we have a stage on which Gorbachev appeared - a liberal politician who already had a warm impression of Western countries and had to solve a diplomatic and economic crisis. That's pretty much why, after a somewhat traditional first year in power, he declared his \"Perestroika\" which included civil liberties and legalization of small business. Between 1985 and 1988 he repeatedly engaged in negotiations with Reagan, which lead to several agreements, including nuclear disarmament. In 1988, Reagan visited Moscow, and when asked about \"the empire of evil\" stated: *\"I was talking about another time, another era\".*\n\nHowever, his economic reforms weren't as successful. By 1989 the internal crisis in the USSR was so drastic that ration stamps were introduced, and the national debt skyrocketed. With his peaceful initiatives and weak economy, Gorbachev was unable to maintain control over the Eastern Bloc, and in 1989 satellite countries underwent an entire wave of (mostly peaceful) revolutions. \"Glasnost\" played its role as well: once being vocal about one's disillusionment with communism became legal, people didn't hesitate to voice it.\n\nI have to point it out - all of this happened *before* the fall of the USSR. It was a long process with lots of contributing factors - but it gained so much momentum that at a certain point there was no way to stop it. In 1991, when the Cold War was technically over, Gorbachev was faced with another wave of separatism and political infighting (and the economic crisis was also far from over): now that the Eastern Bloc was all but dismantled, the leaders of the republics of the USSR proper gathered to re-negotiate their status. Yeltsin, the head of the Russian Republic, was one of them - and he had a long-standing conflict with Gorbachev... Long story short (TOO LATE!), there was a couple of coups, and the whole union crumbled.\n\nGorbachev's [interviews](http://www.lib.ru/MEMUARY/GORBACHEV/poziciya91.txt) from those days show that during those negotiations he was still convinced the union would remain! So, as you can see, it was a long pocess spanning almost a decade, with dozens of contributing factors.",
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/r6qrlg/was_there_every_a_time_in_the_post_cold_war/ | r6qrlg | 2 | t3_r6qrlg | Was there every a time in the post Cold War period to dismantle NATO ? | 2 | 1 | null | false | 1,638,396,793 | [
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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/j7l3e5/numerous_media_of_the_90s_and_00s_make_reference/ | j7l3e5 | 6 | t3_j7l3e5 | Numerous media of the 90s and 00s make reference to a sense of post-Cold War disillusionment (i.e. "the world doesn't make sense anymore") from American and former Soviet diplomats, military, spies, etc. Was this really a common feeling, or an invention of fiction writers and journalists? | 229 | 0.98 | null | false | 1,602,189,757 | [
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"body": "I don't really know if it makes all that much sense to talk about fiction writers and journalists inventing a feeling in this context. How could you express that sentiment unless you felt it yourself on some level? Is there such a thing as media which *doesn't* express the worldview of its author, and therefore to some extent the cultural atmosphere? That would make any such feeling pretty real, right? But that's a philosophical quibble. \n\nAt any rate, scholars much better versed in this topic than I have made the argument that yes, that feeling was real, and not limited to officials. They draw this, generally, from analysis of a wide swath of contemporary media, rather than journalistic quips, so if you're not willing to take fiction writers at their word, maybe historians who use fiction writers as cultural evidence will be a little more trustworthy.\n\nDaniel Rodgers has written [in this article](https://sites.middlebury.edu/coldwarculture/files/2013/12/rodgers001.pdf) about changes in American rhetoric between the Cold War and the post-.\n\nJon Wiener has a piece [at this link](https://sites.middlebury.edu/coldwarculture/files/2013/12/wiener_hippie_day.pdf) about how Reagan's legacy and his Cold War rhetoric have been rosily mythologized, often leading to some funny contradictions, like \"Hippie Day\" at the Reagan Library. \n\nPaul Boyer and Eric Idsvoog consider [in this article](https://sites.middlebury.edu/coldwarculture/files/2013/11/boyer_idsvoog.pdf) the sources of post-Cold War unease, their representations in culture, and the unwillingness of certain Cold War-inspired tropes to die alongside their parent.\n\nThere's also [this piece](https://sites.middlebury.edu/coldwarculture/files/2017/11/Hwang_Fron_the_End_of_History.pdf) by Junghyun Hwang about the two versions of *The Manchurian Candidate* and the difference between their kinds of nostalgia.\n\nAlthough I feel confident giving you summaries of these pieces in order to stay on the good side of the rules, I'm no expert. You may have more luck pinging people flaired on subjects related to the Cold War for a deeper discussion of the state of the field than these articles on their own present.",
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