“Methodological Clashes in Moscow” as Misinterpreted by an American Geographer

David Hooson of the University of British Columbia is accused of prejudiced interpretation of the Soviet discussion of V. A. Anuchin's book Teoreticheskiye problemy geografii and of open hostility toward the Marxist basis of Soviet geography. The authors reject Hooson's suggestion that there may be a growing rapprochement between Soviet and American geography, and they reassert the fundamental political orientation of Soviet geography. In the authors' view, the only useful contact between the two sides must be sought in what they call a complete and objective exchange of information and opinion.     

The Development of International Contacts in the Field of Geography and Preparations for the 20th International Geographical Congress

The authors review international contacts of Soviet geographers in the last four years and describe a volume of Soviet contributions prepared for the London congress. Soviet Geography, its editor, and David Hooson of the University of British Columbia are criticized for their coverage of the Soviet ideological dispute over the “unified geography” concept. A Soviet proposal for greater timeliness and activity in the work of the IGU is offered.     

Methodological Problems of Soviet Geography as Interpreted by Some Foreign Geographers

The author reviews writings by David Hooson, Ian Matley, and O. H. K. Spate and welcomes publicity given abroad to methodological discussion in Soviet geography. In Saushkin's view, the three Western authors concede there is no unity of geography in the West and no theoretical foundation on which such unity could be based. That is why, Saushkin feels, Western geographers are hopefully watching Soviet methodological discussions for a possible solution to their own problems.     

Geographic Study of the Natural Characteristics and the Economic Utilization of the Land Areas of the USSR

This paper by a leading Soviet theoretical physical geographer traces the historical development of the Soviet doctrine of geographic zonality and the role played by heat-moisture relationships in determining the structure, the dynamics and the development of natural geographic zones. The paper includes a table of geographic zonality and explains the periodic character of geographic zonality. Am American review article that provides useful background is: Jacek I. Romanowski, A Survey of Heat and Water Balance Research in the Soviet Union, University of Washington, Discussion Paper No. 41.     

Reviews/Computers Rendus

Between the Summit and the Sea: Central Veracruz in the Nineteenth Century by Alfred H. Siemens,
Atlas of Columbus and the Great Discoveries by Kenneth Nebenzahl
Chaos and Socio-Spatial Dynamics by D.S. DENDRRNOS and M. SONS, Applied Mathematical Series Volume 86
Out of Place: Restoring Identity to the Regional Landscape by Michael Hough, Yale University Press
The Polar Regions: Geographical and Historical Data for Consideration in a Study of Claims to Sovereignty in the Arctic and Antarctic Regions by S.W. Boggs, William S. Hein & Co. Inc.
Making Culture: English-Canadian Institutions and the Arts before the Massey Commission by Maria Tippett
Seeking New Horizons: A Perceptual Approach to Geographic Education by Henry W. Castner, McGill-Queen's University Press
The Making of the American Landscape edited by Michael P. Conzen, Unwin Hyman, Boston
Reflections and Visions: 25 Years of Geography at Waterloo edited by Richard Preston and Bruce Mitchell, Department of Geography Publications Series, No. 33,
The Soviet Scene: A Geographical Perspective by James H. Bater, Edward Arnold, London, 1989
The Soviet Union: A Systematic Geography (2nd edition) edited by Leslie Symons, Routledge, New York
Fire in the Rain: The Democratic Consequences of Chernobyl by peter Gould, John Hopkins University Press
Journal of a Barrenlander, W.H.B. Hoare, 1928–1929 edited by Sheila C. Thomson, Sheila C. Thomson
Field Experiments and Measurement Programs in Geomorphology edited by Olav Slaymaker, University of British Columbia Press
Conflicts of Interest: Canada and the Third World edited by Jamie Swift and Brian Tomlinson, Between The Lines
World Trends in Tourism and Recreation by Zbigniew Mieczkowski, American University Studies     

Soviet Espionage and the Cold War

Book reviewed in this article:
Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov. The Secret World of American Communism
Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Kyrill M. Anderson, The Soviet World of American Communism
John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America
Robert Louis Benson and Michael Warner, eds., Venona: Soviet Espionage and the American Response
Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America – The Stalin Era
James G. Ryan. Earl Browder: The Failure of American Communism
Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel, Bombshell: The Secret Story of America's Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy
Ted Morgan, A Covert Life: Jay Lovestone, Communist, Anti-Communist, and Spymaster
Ellen Schrecker, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America
Harvey Klehr and Ronald Radosh, The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism
Daniel P. Moynihan, Secrecy: The American Experience     

Interview with Frederic Wakeman, Jr.

Born in Kansas City, Kansas, in 1937, reared and educated in the United States and abroad, Wakeman earned his bachelor's degree in European History and Literature at Harvard University, did graduate work in Soviet Studies and Political Theory in Paris, and completed his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Oriental Languages and East Asian History at the University of California, Berkeley. A member of Berkeley's history faculty since 1965, he became the Haas Professor of Asian Studies in 1989 and Director of the Institute of East Asian Studies in 1990. Many of Wakeman's award-winning books on Early Modern, Modern, and Contemporary China have been translated into Chinese. He has held numerous advisory and leadership positions in the American Council of Learned Societies, American Historical Association, Asia Society, and Social Science Research Council, and has facilitated educational and scholarly exchanges with East Asia. The father of two sons and a daughter by a former marriage, Wakeman lives in San Francisco. This interview was conducted on the Berkeley campus in November 1996 by Roger Adelson.     

冷战期间美国文化外交的演变

冷战开始后随着美苏两大阵营的对峙加剧,美国政府通过采取创建新闻署、组建和平队、成立国际交流署等手段,逐步将文化外交融入对外宣传范畴,演变为一种冷战工具,其间政治文化和领袖的国家使命感起到关键作用。这种文化外交在为美国赢得冷战的胜利发挥重要作用的同时,也使其国际信任度和软权力下降。     

JFK and the future of global leadership

On 10 June 1963 President John F. Kennedy gave a speech that changed the world. His commencement speech at American University helped to spur the signing of a world‐changing agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States—the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. This episode of peacemaking is remarkable for two reasons. First, it arguably helped to save the world, since the nuclear confrontation at that stage of the Cold War was not a ‘stable balance of terror’, as sometimes described, but rather a highly unstable situation that was prone to accidents, misjudgements and potential disasters. Second, this was an episode of statesmanship in which presidential leadership played a crucial role. Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy understood that he bore sole responsibility on the US side to find a way back from the brink of nuclear war. He used the ‘peace speech’ to create a novel kind of peace diplomacy, and worked together with his counterpart, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, to pull the superpowers back from this precarious brink.     

‘Raging Rumors’: American Diplomats’ Reportage from Latvia and Estonia, 1938–1940

‘Raging Rumors’ examines how the Soviet invasion and annexation unfolded in Latvia and Estonia. The reportage of American diplomats documents Nazi and Soviet aggression and the loss of neutrality for Latvia and Estonia. American diplomats at post recorded what they witnessed, but also what they were told by their contacts, thus providing readers with Latvian and Estonian governmental perspectives and world views. As spectators with a front-row seat watching how the Second World War began, the American diplomats reported back to Washington. This article sheds light on what transpired in Latvia and Estonia, how Latvians and Estonians perceived of their situation, and how the US government engaged and failed to engage in the Baltic.     

The Present State of Toponymy in the USSR

A review of recent place-name research, methods, and publications in the Soviet Union by a deputy chairman of the Toponymy Commission of the Moscow Branch of the Geographical Society USSR. For a previous article on Soviet toponymy, see E. M. Murzayev, “Origin of geographic names,” Soviet Geography, Accomplishments and Tasks, American Geographical Society, 1962, pp. 254–58.     

Convergence in Cold War Physics: Coinventing the Maser in the Postwar Soviet Union

At the height of the Cold War, in the 1950s, the process of parallel invention of masers and lasers took place on the opposing sides of the Iron Curtain. While the American part of the story has been investigated by historians in much penetrating detail, comparable Soviet developments were described more superficially. This study aims at, to some extent, repairing this discrepancy by analyzing the Soviet path towards the maser from a comparative angle. It identifies, on the one hand, significant differences between the two projects regarding their heuristics, the relationship between theory and experiment, grounding in different academic cultures, and the resulting conceptualization of the maser principle. At the same time, the case also illustrates more fundamental transformations in the practices of postwar research that can be characterized as a convergence between the Soviet and the American science of the period.     

Yu. G. Saushkin's Reply to a Letter of Protest by Nine Soviet Geographers

The following is a reply to a letter that appeared in Soviet Geography, January 1963, pp. 60–62, accusing Saushkin of having given a misleading picture of Soviet economic geography in his article in the American journal Economic_Geography, 1962, No. 1. Saushkin rejects the charges that he gave a one-sided and impoverished picture of the Soviet discipline, that he minimized Lenin's contribution to Soviet economic geography, that he departed from an official definition of the discipline adopted in 1955, and that he supported three controversial Soviet geographers, R. M. Kabo, N. N. Kolosovskly, and V. A. Anuchin.     

The Cold War: How the Winner Won

Books reviewed in this article:
Scott Lucas,. Freedom's War: The American Crusade Against the Soviet Union
Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin: America's Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947–1956
Arch Puddington, Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Libelrty     

ON UNDERESTIMATION OF THE CLIMATIC FACTOR IN GEOMORPHOLOGY

A plea for greater consideration of the climatic factor in Soviet geomorphology, which, in the view of the dean of Moscow University geomorphologists, tends to place undue emphasis on the engodenic factors of relief formation. The author would not go so far as to favor a separate climatically oriented discipline in geomorphology, but he urges greater emphasis on the climatic factor in the training of geomorphologists in the Soviet Union. The author cites examples of recent Soviet work in which the climatic factor was neglected and an example in which it was properly considered.     

战后苏美经济合作尝试的失败——兼论经济冷战的起源

二战后期和战后初期,苏美两国都有在战后进行经济合作的构想,并为此进行了一定的尝试.但由于双方对经济合作的考虑各异,特别是由于两国矛盾的发展,罗斯福政府关于战后苏美经济合作的构想没能实现.受政治因素和意识形态因素的影响,杜鲁门政府逐步把向苏联提供经济援助同美国的国家安全联系起来,不仅没有满足苏联方面提出的货款要求,而且还关闭了美国同苏联和东欧社会主义国家发展自由贸易的大门.苏联拒绝参加马歇尔援助计划标志着战后初期苏美经济合作尝试的失败.此后,两国矛盾进一步加剧."莫洛托夫计划"的实施和"巴黎统筹委员会"的建立揭开了东西方经济冷战的序幕.     

Study of the History of Geographical Ideas

Two recent books on the history of geographical ideas, by A. G. Isachenko of Leningrad University, and by Preston James of Syracuse University, are reviewed in the general context of the need for a textbook for courses now being taught at Soviet universities. The Isachenko book is criticized on the ground that it reduces the history of geographical ideas to a history of physical geography, ignoring the impact of human activity. James, who deals with the history of geographical ideas as a whole, is praised for having included a chapter on the new geography in the Soviet Union and on the innovative aspects of theoretical geography, such as systems theory, spatial systems, diffusion on studies, etc. In the reviewer's opinion, the two books need to be examined critically in connection with preparation of a text for a Soviet university course on the history and methodology of geography.     

Corvalán for Bukovsky: a real exchange of prisoners during an imaginary war. The Chilean dictatorship,the Soviet Union,and US mediation, 1973–1976

Based on Chilean, Soviet, American, and Italian declassified documents, this article examines a particular case in the global Cold War: the only international exchange of political prisoners during that period, involving the general secretary of the Chilean Communist Party Luis Corvalán and Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky. It emphasises the intersecting agendas, purposes, and consequences of multiple state and non-state actors in this episode: from the governments of Chile, the US, and the USSR, to the Chilean Communist Party, the Soviet dissident movement, and finally to the European communist parties, Cuba, international solidarity, and human rights movements.     

美国对1969年中苏边界冲突的反应

1969年的中苏边界冲突使双方走到了战争的边缘,美国方面对中苏冲突的反应是一个从倾向于中国“好战”和“挑衅”到看清苏联意图的认识过程。美国一直想利用中苏分歧,使其在与苏联争夺霸权的较量中获利。1969年的中苏边界冲突客观上为美国提供了一个绝好的机会,尼克松政府也抓住了这个机会。中苏边界冲突造成的中苏关系空前紧张的形势,使尼克松、基辛格感到美国有可能在处理美、苏、中三角关系中处于优越地位。所以,中苏冲突客观上是促进美国加速调整对华政策的催化剂。     

二战期间苏联犹太人反法西斯委员会代表团的盟国之行评析

1943年6月至12月,由米霍埃尔斯和费费尔组成的苏联犹太人反法西斯委员会代表团对美国、英国等西方盟国犹太人社团进行了长达半年的友好访问。访问的主要目的是宣传动员西方犹太人支援苏联的反法西斯战争,同时还有为苏联获取美国原子弹研制情报提供服务之意。访问期间,代表团与西方盟国的犹太名流和犹太人组织进行了充分的交流,建立了密切的关系;通过广播演讲、参加各种群众集会等方式,在西方犹太人舆论界形成了强烈的亲苏氛围;为苏联军民争取到大量的金钱和物资援助,从而有效地配合了苏联政府的战时对外宣传政策,对卫国战争的胜利作出了重要贡献。