Editor’s Note

This issue begins with an article by Jeremy Friedman discussing how the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the East German Socialist Unity Party (SED) responded to the revolutionary turmoil in Iran in 1979. Both the CPSU and the SED had long-standing ties with the Iranian Tudeh (Communist) Party, which they funded and supported. Because of ideological misconceptions connected with Soviet Marxist-Leninist doctrine and erroneous lessons derived from the overthrow of Salvador Allende’s far-left government in Chile in 1973, the Tudeh supported the Islamist clerics led by Ayatollah Khomeini both during and after the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in February 1979. Even after it was clear that the Islamists wanted to impose a fundamentalist Islamic regime in Iran, the Tudeh maintained its support for Khomeini, much to its own detriment. This dynamic helps to explain why the CPSU and SED for a considerable while backed forces that ultimately crushed the radical leftwing forces the Soviet Union and East Germany had been seeking to empower in the aftermath of the Shah’s downfall.

The next article, by Ieva Zake, discusses the work of Inturist, the Soviet agency that handled foreign tourism, in the post-Stalin era. During the Stalin era, very few foreigners were permitted to come to the Soviet Union, and the only ones who did were shown nothing more than the supposed glories of Communism. In the post-Stalin era, the Soviet government gradually encouraged increases in foreign tourism to the USSR. Although Inturist still included ample propaganda in its offerings and helped state security officers maintain close surveillance of all visitors, the agency eventually began to diversify the options for foreign tourists, in part to earn hard currency for the USSR. This was especially the case outside the two largest cities, Moscow and Leningrad. Drawing on declassified records of the Inturist branch in Riga, Zake shows that in Latvia, as in other “exotic” Soviet republics, Inturist increasingly promoted what scholars of tourism often describe as “ethnic tourism”—the exposure of people to “authentic” cultures outside the mainstream. The promotion of ethnic tourism in the post-Stalin era did not exclude trips for pro-Soviet leftists and “peace” activists, but it did mean that travel to the USSR was also available for those who wanted more than just a barrage of heavy-handed propaganda extolling Communism.

The next article, by Mikkel Runge Olesen, examines why Denmark ended up joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a founding member in April 1949. Olesen shows that this outcome was not preordained. Amid a contentious debate in Denmark in 1948 and early 1949 about the best way to defend against a possible threat from the Soviet Union, the Danish government initially favored a Scandinavian Defense Union with Norway and Sweden rather than a larger alliance with the United States. Not until the Scandinavian option failed to pan out did the Danish political establishment belatedly reach a consensus in favor of joining NATO. In explaining this shift, Olesen draws on neoclassical realist literature in the field of International Relations. He argues that perceptions of external threat (the looming threat of Soviet military expansion and political subversion), molded by Denmark’s recent historical experiences, especially the conflicting impulses generated by Denmark’s long tradition of neutrality before World War II and the trauma inflicted by Nazi Germany’s occupation of Denmark on 9 April 1940, guided Danish leaders toward NATO.

The penultimate article, by Marco Wyss, recounts the attempt by Great Britain to gain a leading role in formation of an air force in Nigeria, which until 1960 had been a British colony. Because of the strategic importance and resource wealth of Nigeria, British officials wanted to maintain close ties with it after it became independent. The leaders of the newly independent west African country were unenthusiastic about having the British involved in the building of an air force, and they looked instead to British Commonwealth countries (especially those in the Third World) to provide assistance. Unlike many other African states, however, the Nigerians did not become stridently anti-Western and were never willing to approach the Soviet bloc...