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This paper assesses the thought and philosophy of South Asian intellectuals affiliated to the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). The CCF's founders – anti-communist European and American scholars – encouraged allies across several continents to establish magazines and organise conferences warning of the threats posed by 'totalitarianism' to free cultural expression. But South Asian members, more interested in postcolonial politics, used its resources to initiate transnational conversations about social change. Probing neglected local CCF magazines and seminar transcripts, the paper also constitutes an early intervention on intersections between the cultural Cold War and decolonisation among non-state actors in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper scrutinises the Ford Foundation's Fund for Adult Education from the perspective of Cold War social science. Its massive Experimental Discussion Project was an attempt at scientifically grounded social engineering in American communities in the field of liberal humanistic education. This civilisation-saving mission to foster critical democratic citizenship and world-understanding ran into aparadox of scientific social engineering and organic community growth, expertise, and planning versus lay leadership. Discussion groups opened up space for discussing politics during the McCarthy era, while its scientific evaluation was characteristic of the 1950s Culture Wars in its value neutrality and race-blindness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1985 and 1989 hundreds of Soviet citizens came to the United States in projects initiated by American activists who feared nuclear war and hoped to improve relations with the USSR. This ambitious citizen diplomacy led to hundreds of thousands of encounters between Soviet visitors and Americans that shattered negative stereotypes. Since the Soviet visitors received extensive media coverage, the programs had broad impacts on attitudes in many American towns and cities. As a result, 'the Cold War' ended in the hearts and minds of many Americans long before the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article questions Michael Share's thesis concerning the reasons behind the continued hostility between the Soviet Union and Taiwan during the Cold War, irrespective of re-established contacts in the late 1960s-early 1970s. It argues that the newly emerged evidence concerning Soviet-Taiwanese relations during the Cold War validated John Garver's conclusions, published in 1977, while Share fails to provide sufficient evidence to support his major argument. Moscow and Taipei remained hostile to each other for geo-political, rather than ideological, reasons. Taiwan's anti-Sovietism stemmed from its awareness that closer relations with the Soviets would have affected the US commitment to the ROC's defence, scared off foreign investors and possibly provoked military action by China. Moscow, for its part, being aware that any collaboration with the ROC would have been counterproductive to its efforts to mend fences with the PRC and could have accelerated a Sino-American rapprochement, consistently supported the 'one China' principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Documents declassified since 1997 have shed considerable light on the role of US covert operations in Cuba from April 1961 to October 1962. Revelations from these materials can help resolve the debate over whether the Kennedy administration had planned a second invasion of Cuba after the landing at the Bay of Pigs. An examination of the administration's covert actions in Cuba, both prior to and during Operation Mongoose, reveal clear bounds within which President Kennedy sought to circumscribe those actions. And the policy he adopted, a preponderant body of evidence shows, stopped well short of overt military intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]