A second drum riff for the rollout of syllabus 466...and the person you see in the picture, atop the Chrysler mini-van, is me. I'm in exhibit guide mode, talking to Soviet visitors about leisure time in America, during our exhibit's tour in Rostov-on-Don, USSR. That was MY cold war...
History 466
Cold War
History 466/spring 2011/WSUTC/B. Farley
Welcome to 466! First, the essential contact info: Office 207 J West Building 332-7257. Reality-based, up-close and personal office hours: 3:30-4pm Monday and Wednesday; virtual office hours 24/7 by email at brigitf2001@yahoo.com or bfarley@tricity.wsu.edu. I always will try to get back to you as soon as possible—email is my favorite means of communication. For emergencies, my ancestral estate in Pendleton, Oregon may be reached at 541-276-6962.
Now, some non-essential info: By way of introducing myself, I once played “how well do you know your friends” games during the break and answered a short questionnaire from the internet this way(note: some responses have been modified to reflect Cold War themes):
Four schools you have attended: Pendleton High School, Georgetown University, Indiana University, Leningrad University. I studied THE cold war language, the language of the “enemy” at all of these places.
Four Cold War-related jobs you've had in your life: exhibit guide/propagandist, translator, transliterator, subject for “linguistic researchers."
Four Cold War movies you could see over and over: Saving Private Ryan(early Cold War issue), Dr. Strangelove, Goodbye Lenin, The Russians are Coming.
Four Cold War-related places you've lived: Washington, DC, Moscow, Russia, Leningrad, USSR, Kiev, USSR
Four Cold War TV shows you love to watch: MASH(Korean conflict), Twilight Zone(lots of Cold War themes), Outer Limits(lots of would-be alien invaders with Russian accents), All in the Family(a mini-Cold War waged each episode between conservative Archie Bunker and his “meathead” son-in-law, a real classic). None of them very new…
Four places(Cold War or non) you've been on vacation: Maui, Hawaii, Moville, Co. Donegal, Ireland, Solovetskii Islands, Russia, northern France and Belgium
Four of your favorite Cold War foods: Hungarian stuffed cabbages, borshcht, khachapuri(Georgian stuffed cheese bread).
Four favorite Cold War cities: London, Paris, Budapest, Ljubljana
The Lowdown: Welcome to Cold War, a study of the 50-year “cold” conflict between the Soviet Union and its allies and the United States and its allies that began in the closing days of World War II and ended with the collapse of Communism in eastern Europe, which was followed by the implosion of Communism in the USSR in August l991. I should amend that to read, “mostly cold.” There was quite a lot of “hot” action, as the thousands of casualties in the Korean, Vietnamese and Afghan conflicts would tell you, even if these were officially “proxy wars.” I don’t think you are any less dead for being killed in a “proxy” rather than a direct conflict between the superpowers.
We will be trying this term to determine what caused this conflict, beginning way before l945. We want to trace the course of the “hostilities,” exploring how the war shaped domestic events anc culture in the two superpower “belligerents,” that is, US here in America and THEM in the USSR. We won’t get too much farther than l962, because it takes that long to cover the early part of the Cold War, and people tend to have a lot of comments. However, we will do what we can to cover what happened later.
In between, we will try to get acquainted with some of the most interesting people and events from this odd war. Some of you will find them more familiar than others, especially if you are old enough to remember “ducking and covering” to protect against nuclear annihilation. Some of us, including me, are actual Cold Warriors. I spent l987-88 in the soviet Union as a guide for the United States Information Agency’s traveling exhibit, “Information Technology in American Life.” Some people called that position “propagandist.” Anyway, we were there to demonstrate computer technology and how it helps at home and at work AND advertise American life. Some Soviet people invariably took issue with our presentation and engaged us in verbal combat, e.g. “why do Americans want war with the Soviet Union?” “Why do you kill your Presidents?” “Why do you let people own guns,” “How many volts do you give them in the electric chair? After l4 months of that, I really felt like a veteran of the Cold War. Certainly the issues that preoccupied the policymakers also preoccupied the people in the “trenches.”
Readings: Our basic text is Martin Walker’s Cold War: A History. This will help you follow the basic narrative of events, which can get complicated at times. Then, Robert Dallek, JFK: An Unfinished Life. JFK witnessed or participated in all the most crucial episodes in the Cold War, and Dallek’s biography is one of the latest and best. Victor Grossman’s Crossing the River tells the unusual story of an American on the other side of the Cold War, not a perspective you get every day when looking at this period. And Michael d’Antonio’s book on the drama of the late l950s and 60s—the sputnik/space race—is an entertaining look at Nikita Khrushchev’s obsession with being first in space(if nothing else!)…
Class Procedures and Evaluation: 466 is one of those great Tier III courses, which are designed to bring together knowledge and perspectives from several disciplines and which require a thoughtful writing assignment. It also lends itself particularly well to the new WSUTC undergraduate research exposition: the Liberal Arts symposium. Everyone in this class will participate in this end-of-semester extravaganza. You will fulfill this requirement and make your symposium debut(or return, if you did it before) by choosing an individual or phenomenon(animal, vegetable, or mineral?) that played a big part in the Cold War and design a small museum exhibit dedicated to that person, place or thing. One part of the exhibit is the script, an introduction to your subject plus a narrative making clear how he/she/it influenced the course of the cold war. You should not assume much knowledge on the part of your visitors—this would be a big mistake. This part should be between 4-7 pages. Then you will sketch out the exhibit-- choose illustrations/ photographs/ivideos/attractions that make your subject clear, make it come alive, to people v. In part III, you will actually build/establish your exhibit in the designated room for the symposium and greet the people who come to see it.
This assignment will be worth 50% of your grade. You will turn in your script in mid-April, maybe on Tax Day, and then you will present your exhibit at the symposium during finals week, IN LIEU of the final. I will base your grade on quality of script, originality of presentation and attention to detail throughout.
Some of the people/places/things you might consider making the subject for your exhibit: Berlin Wall, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Harry S. Truman, “containment,” theory and practice, Marshall Plan, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, John F. Kennedy, nuclear weapons, Los Alamos, Hanford, Josip Broz Tito/Yugoslavia, Hollywood Blacklist, Joe McCarthy, Ho Chi Minh, Korea in the fifties, US-Cuban relations and Castro, Cold War “nightmare” cinema, e.g. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Cold War and American l950s, etc. etc. You are limited only by your imagination and the parameters of the Cold War.
Besides the Big Assignment, you will have a midterm after Part II(40%).
Caveats: Come to class and listen—you know what Woody Allen says, 90% of life is just showing up—start the Big Assignment right away and keep up on the not-too-labor-intensive readings. If you do all these things, you’ll have a good time in the course and maybe even learn a thing or two as well.
Schedule
Part I: Beginnings
America and Russia, l9l7
Soviet Russia: a short intro
The first skirmish
Two visions of the ideal world, l9l9
Self-determination or world socialist revolution?
America: the view from the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union: the view from America
Dictators’ rendezvous: the Nazi-Soviet pact, l939
The big doublecross and the new team, l941: USA, USSR, Great Britain
The marriage of convenience
Wartime conferences
Endgame: the race to Berlin
Readings: Walker, Cold War, pp. 1-27. Dallek JFK: An Unfinished Life, pp. 3-135 Grossman
Featured film: Mission to Moscow(l943)…very controversial in its day.
Recommended readings: Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution. This will tell you all about the revolution and establishment of Russian Communism,. Also, Louis Auchincloss, Woodrow Wilson. That’s the best short bio of Woodrow Wilson, our own drum major for democracy
Part II: Cold War follows hot, l945-53
Outlines of a divided Europe
The United States and the Bomb
Outlines of a Cold War
Dueling speeches
Containment and Marshall Plan
The “Iron Curtain” in eastern Europe and the state that escaped
The Berlin Crisis, round I
Stalin gets the bomb
Cold War turns hot and goes global: the “police action” in Korea and revolution in China
The Cold War and the home front: US and USSR
Readings: Walker, pp. 27-82; Dallek, pp. 134-266; continue with Grossman; start D’Antonio
Recommended readings: Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin. This is a great insiders’ view of what Stalin was REALLY like, behind the all-knowing, all-wise Uncle Joe façade. It wasn’t pretty. Also, David McCullough, Truman. McCullough is an eminently readable biographer and he brings Harry S. to life very effectively.
Midterm exam after this section, or perhaps partway through part III—TBA.
Part III: Hope, Confusion and (Near)Apocalypse: The Khrushchev years, l953-64
The death of “Uncle Joe” and the rise of Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev
Korean armistice
Khrushchev’s bombshell
Revolution in Poland and Hungary
Khrushchev woos the developing world
The ascent of John F. Kennedy: “bearing any burden”
Bad beginning: Castro’s revolution and the Bay of Pigs
K2: Kennedy and Khrushchev .
The Berlin Crisis, round II: The Wall
Missles in October
Looking down the abyss: confronting nukes off the American mainland
“The other fellow blinked:” the end of the crisis
Nuclear non-proliferation
The end of an era: the end of Kennedy and Khrushchev and the course of the Cold War
Readings: Walker, pp. 82-182; finish Dallek; finish Grossman; d’Antonio, Ball, Dog, Monkey.
Recommended readings: William Taubman, Khrushchev: A biography. This is chapter and verse on Nikita Khrushchev, a great book, also a demanding one. If you can get Roy Medvedev, Khrushchev, that one is shorter and written from a Russian perspective. On Kennedy, the classic study is Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. A Thousand Days. Schlesinger was the “court historian” of the JFK administration.
LIBERAL ARTS SYMPOSIUM PRESENTATION takes the place of your final.
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