THE ROLE OF FINNISH LEFTISTS IN SOVIET–FINNISH ARTISTIC EXCHANGES DURING THE LATE SOCIALIST PERIOD

The article examines artistic exchanges between the USSR and Finland from the viewpoint of the Finnish left. After WWII, Finland was in a difficult geopolitical position; although not occupied by the USSR, it received little support from the West and so remained an independent capitalist democracy, with little foreign leverage. The Soviet influence was felt in many areas, and throughout the Cold War, Finland received many more world-class Soviet artists than any other Western country. This was in part a consequence of Finland’s proximity to the USSR, but the Finnish Communist Party, a major domestic political force, also played a role. Immediately after the war, organizations associated with the Finnish Communist Party enjoyed a virtual monopoly over such exchanges, but this began to change in the mid-1950s. Around that time, the USSR began to allow Finnish artists to train and perform at its world-class arenas, and many of those Finnish students had links with the political left. Based on interviews and supported by archival material from Finland and Russia, the article explores the role of the Finnish left in these artistic exchanges.     

From World War to Cold War: Scandinavian media attitudes to the Soviet Union 1945–1948

At the end of the war in Europe in 1945, an alliance-loyalty attitude was predominant among the Scandinavian public voices on the Soviet Union. This attitude incorporated a favourable image of the Soviet war effort and implied that the Soviet system had undergone changes during the war. Another significant group supported the Soviet system more unequivocally. These attitudes were dominant in the Scandinavian media and public debate until late 1945 or early 1946, when opposition to and fear of the Soviet Union began to be openly expressed in conservative and social-democratic newspapers. A bipartisan attitude to the Soviet Union had not developed at this stage, as the alliance-loyalty attitude was transformed into a clearer third-voice attitude that saw the Soviet Union on the one hand as a power which was not worthy of imitation, but which on the other hand accepted that the Soviet Union was seeking international peace and cooperation. Third-voice supporters in the Scandinavian media sought investigative reports on conditions in the Soviet Union, as they claimed that the growing anti-Soviet attitudes were based on a lack of accurate knowledge. Considering that Denmark, Norway and Sweden had experienced different conditions during the war, the differences in public attitudes to the Soviet Union were comparatively small. The public third voice on the Soviet Union was clearly weakened in 1948 by the reception of more critical information on the Soviet system and the perception of news on international developments.     

冷战时期中国周边安全环境的特征与启示

冷战时期,中国的周边安全环境不断变化,20世纪50年代,中国的周边环境呈现出北方安全、东南方严峻的基本态势;60年代,中国周边安全形势十分险恶;60年代末70年代初,中国周边安全形势有所改善;进入80年代,中国周边安全环境大大改善。冷战时期中国周边安全环境的阶段性特征表明,国际格局和周边主要国家对华政策是影响中国周边安全环境的两大外部因素,中国对外战略和综合国力则是两个重要内因。事实证明,内因比外因重要。     

From imperial revenants to Cold War victims: ‘red repatriates’ from the Soviet Union and the making of the new Japan, 1949–1952

When over half a million former Imperial Japanese Army soldiers returned home from long captivity in Soviet labour camps in the late 1940s, they brought back more than their memories of hardship and humiliation. In post-war society, the Siberian returnees were the uncomfortable remnants of the failed Japanese Empire; yet it was their brush with the communist enemy that caused suspicion and dragged them into the domestic political struggles. In this article, I use the experiences of Siberian internees as a lens to reconsider Japan’s formative post-war decade, when the onset of the Cold War eclipsed the inconvenient legacies of empire.     

Backlash of the Free World: the US presence at the World Youth Festival in Helsinki, 1962

The Soviet-sponsored World Festival of Youth and Students brought an exceptional number of US citizens to Helsinki in the summer of 1962. The event was made important by the fact that it took place in neutral territory. Furthermore, this event briefly made Helsinki a centre of extensive Cold War operations. This article examines the background and impact of this festival in the larger context of the Cold War and international relations. The timing of the festival is especially intriguing, between two major Cold War confrontations, the Berlin crisis of 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. However, instead of being an open conflict between warring parties, the festival reminds us of other conflicts of the cultural Cold War: it was waged through front organizations. Both the KGB and CIA were involved behind the scenes deploying their representatives and trying to impact the Finns' – but also the other festival delegates' – thinking, and win them over to their respective causes. This article exploits both Finnish and American archival sources, mostly intelligence reports from the festival. Apart from the festival in Helsinki, therefore, this article illustrates the way in which Finland was subjected to political and cultural influencing by the superpowers during the height of the Cold War.     

A FLUID IRON CURTAIN

The Pasvik River shapes the greater part of the border between Russia and Norway. This body of water was a site of Norwegian–Soviet energy cooperation from the 1950s until the late 1970s. Norwegian firms constructed four hydropower stations in a strategically sensitive area. Drawing on Soviet and Norwegian archival materials, this study analysed the heterogeneous interests and negotiation processes that resulted in long-term hydropower cooperation.

The powerhouses were designed to produce both electrical and political energies for transfer across the border. These infrastructural projects fit into the contemporary narrative of peaceful coexistence and prompted a firm cooperation between the two countries. Norwegian workers built power plants on Soviet soil, thereby legitimizing the Norwegian social democrats’ policy of rapprochement. The Soviet government and media portrayed the construction as physical proof of good neighbourly relations. Not only state actors but also members of the Norwegian–Soviet Friendship Society aimed to appropriate the powerhouses for their specific goals. They worked to soften the border regime between the two countries, thus initiating a locally limited visa-free entry zone. However, this project was short-lived because Norwegian–Soviet cooperation at the border was restricted to the realm of energy production.     

From Hope to Escape: Post‐Soviet Russian Memory and Identity

Drawing on letters written by citizens of the USSR to US Congressman James Wright following his 1987 congressional visit and Soviet television appearance as well as follow‐up interviews conducted by this author with many of the same individuals in 2002–2004, this paper will recount the memories of several Muscovites and argue that although the western collective memory of the Cold War is one of victory, the individual accounts of Russians reveals a created memory of the Soviet past which, when confronted with the dire socioeconomic conditions that exist in post‐1991 Russia, leads to a crisis of identity.     

Solidarity within limits: Interkit and the evolution of the Soviet Bloc’s Indochina policy, 1967–1985

This article examines how Interkit, the Soviet-controlled ‘anti-China International’, evaluated the development of Sino-Indochinese relations, and which contribution the Vietnamese and Laotian delegations made to the forum’s meetings. It investigates how the various shifts in Sino-Soviet and Soviet-US relations enhanced or reduced Vietnam’s relative importance in Soviet strategy. It describes how the Kremlin sought to dissuade its East European satellites from responding to Beijing’s overtures by presenting the Sino-Vietnamese conflict as evidence of China’s belligerence, and examines the ideological linkage between Soviet superpower hegemony over Eastern Europe and Vietnamese regional hegemony over Indochina.     

Fiasco: The Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance That Never Was and the Unpublished British White Paper, 1939–1940

This article is about the Anglo-Franco-Soviet negotiations in 1939 for an alliance against Nazi Germany and about how the British government later tried to represent those negotiations to public opinion. The first part of the essay presents the Soviet point of view on the negotiations and how the British and French governments, though mainly the British, reacted to Soviet alliance proposals. It is a fresh representation of the Soviet perspective from published and unpublished Russian language sources.

The second part of the essay focuses on how the British sought to represent the abortive negotiations through a white paper, placing the blame for failure on the Soviet Union. France opposed publication because, however carefully prepared, the white paper showed that the Soviet side had made serious alliance proposals with precise, reciprocal undertakings which the British government was reticent to entertain. The French were all the more annoyed because the white paper omitted to underline that they had been more receptive to Soviet proposals.

The trilingual, multi-archival evidence presented in the first part of the essay effectively supports the French perception of the white paper and more generally of the failed tripartite negotiations.     

The Making of an ‘All Weather Friendship’ Pakistan,China and the History of a Border Agreement: 1949–1963

China and Pakistan share what is widely known as an ‘all weather friendship’. The historical roots of this friendship can be traced to 1963, when the two countries entered into a border agreement that divided territory in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Since then, China has provided missile and nuclear technology to Pakistan. It has limited the potential for escalation in the time of war between India and Pakistan and is the largest economic investor in Pakistan. The benefits of this friendship for Pakistan are clear. Yet, there is little detail on what led to the making of the ‘all weather friendship’. This article provides a detailed account of Sino–Pakistani relations between 1949 and 1963. It argues that whilst the 1963 agreement led to a turning point, the Pakistani establishment – military and civilian – sought to engage China since 1949. They did so to create strategic options for themselves in the event that the US and the UK – Pakistan's main allies following independence – limited or worse, ended their support for Pakistan in its troubled relations with India. This article is based on primary sources available in the US, Britain, as well as recently declassified and hitherto unused papers in India.     

‘To help the Republicans not just by donations and rallies,but with the rifle’: militant solidarity with the Spanish Republic in the Soviet Union, 1936–1937

The article sets out to map militant Soviet solidarity with the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War (1936–9). It is based on recently declassified letters that ordinary Soviet citizens addressed to the Comintern, asking its head, Georgi Dimitrov, to send them as volunteers to fight against Fascism in Spain. The articles evaluates the social profiles of these would-be volunteers, their rhetoric of militant solidarity and the social climate in which they formulated their pleas to fight abroad – namely the onset of Stalin's purges in the Soviet Union.     

冷战时期影响印美关系的因素分析

纵观冷战期间印美关系的演变历史,非结盟却并不完全交恶的状态是主调.外交目标的分歧、印巴矛盾、经济援助以及印度国内背景等方面是影响两国关系的多重性因素,正是这些因素的此消彼长,形成了印美关系在友好与淡漠状态之间徘徊.     

Multiple connections in European co-operation: international organizations,policy ideas,practices and transfers 1967–92

Abstract

International organizations are ubiquitous in contemporary Europe and the wider world. This special issue takes a historical approach to exploring their relations with each other in Western Europe between 1967 and 1992. The authors seek to ‘provincialize’ and ‘de-centre’ the European Union’s role, exploring the interactions of its predecessors with other organizations like NATO, the OECD and the Council of Europe. This article develops the new historical-research agenda of co-operation and competition among IOs and their role in European co-operation. The first section discusses the limited existing work on such questions among historians and in adjacent disciplines. The second section introduces the five articles and their main arguments. The third section goes on to elaborate common findings, especially regarding what the authors call the vectors for the development of policy ideas and practices and their transfer across different institutional platforms.     

对在华苏联专家问题的历史考察:基本状况及政策变化

向国外派遣大量专家和顾问 ,是冷战时代社会主义国家之间关系的一种特别现象。本文以大量中国地方档案和俄国解密档案及当事人回忆为依据 ,讨论了 2 0世纪 5 0年代在华苏联专家的基本状况。作者认为 ,1 0年之间约 2万名苏联专家来华 ,完全是中国巩固政权和发展经济的要求 ;中苏双方对短时间内大量专家来华都缺乏必要的准备和严格的管理 ;1 95 4— 1 95 6年是专家来华的高潮 ,受波兰事件影响 ,从 1 95 7年双方加强对专家来华的控制 ;1 95 7— 1 96 0年中国实行少而精的原则 ,特别要求增加国防新技术专家 ,但中苏关系恶化导致专家工作停顿。苏联派往中国的专家人数最多 ,时间最长 ,加强这一课题的研究 ,对探讨社会主义国家关系特点 ,分析中苏同盟破裂的原因 ,以及思考中国走向现代化的发展道路具有特别意义。     

Representations of the Outbreak of World War II in Polish Film, 1945–67: From Partial Recognition to a Component of National Memory

In September 1939, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, starting World War II. The war’s end in 1945 marked not the true liberation of the country, but the beginning of a period of Soviet domination that ended only in 1989. As a result, for forty-five years of Polish history, the alliance made by the Hitler with Stalin in 1939 and its tragic consequences for Poland were taboo across society. Polish filmmakers presenting the beginning of World War II were constrained by realities of the Communist state and its own historical narratives. These films reflect what happened to their country in 1939 and highlight the political changes that occurred within Poland under Communist rule, as well as the impact of shifts in the regime itself. The most significant period in this regard was 1945–67, when the outbreak of war was first presented following the end of Stalinism, emerging as a component of national memory both generally and for the Communist authorities.