Project MUSE®: Journal of Cold War Studies - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/43
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Journal of Cold War Studies.daily12026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (1999) through current issueLatest Articles: Journal of Cold War StudiesTWOProject MUSE®Journal of Cold War Studies1531-32981520-3972Latest articles in Journal of Cold War Studies. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Editor's Note
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985396
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This issue begins with an article by Perry Johansson showing how the Communist regimes in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV, i.e., North Vietnam) sought to manipulate protest movements in Western countries against the U.S. war in Vietnam from the mid-1960s on. Johansson focuses on the case of Sweden, where antiwar protest movements were among the largest in Europe. In part because of the burgeoning number of protesters, Sweden's Social Democratic governments took a vehement stance against U.S. policy, especially during Olaf Palme's tenure as prime minister (1969–1976). The article shows how the PRC and DRV enlisted a well-known Swedish writer, Sara Lidman, to spread
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/43/image/coversmallEditor's Note2026-03-18text/htmlen-USEditor's Note2026-03-182026TWOProject MUSE®93262026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-18Not Peace but Victory: Hanoi and the Exploitation of Western Protest Activists
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985397
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In popular discourse the Vietnam War protest movement is portrayed as a morally laudable rebellion of the young against the old and a heroic attempt to bring a cruel and senseless war to a halt. The Vietnam War protesters, the argument goes, were pacifists with a conscience, who turned against a belligerent and racist imperialism that belonged in the dustbin of history.1 Certainly related to this canonization, academic literature on the protests is both laudatory and abundant.2 Although interest in the protests has changed over time, most recently focusing on issues of gender and race, the view that the protest movement was selflessly trying to end the war still dominates.3Although most scholarship on the protest
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/43/image/coversmallNot Peace but Victory: Hanoi and the Exploitation of Western Protest Activists2026-03-18text/htmlen-USNot Peace but Victory: Hanoi and the Exploitation of Western Protest Activists2026-03-182026TWOProject MUSE®1502312026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-18Connecting Communist Insurgencies in China and Vietnam: Chinese Border Operations and the Making of a Cold War Alliance, 1945–1949
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985398
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A crucial event in Asian Cold War history was Ho Chi Minh's secret visit to Beijing and Moscow in January 1950, marking the formation of an alliance between the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The large academic literature dealing with the alliance between these two Communist states does not adequately explain why they forged a partnership in 1950.1 Some scholars have argued that, in addition to the personal ties between the highest leaders of the two Communist parties, their shared ideology played a crucial role in the Cold War context.2 This is only partly convincing, however, because it does not explain their future tensions. It is therefore necessary to investigate the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/43/image/coversmallConnecting Communist Insurgencies in China and Vietnam: Chinese Border Operations and the Making of a Cold War Alliance, 1945–19492026-03-18text/htmlen-USConnecting Communist Insurgencies in China and Vietnam: Chinese Border Operations and the Making of a Cold War Alliance, 1945–19492026-03-182026TWOProject MUSE®1710682026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-18Through the Lens of the Marxist-Leninist Dispute: East German Policy toward North Vietnam on the Eve of the U.S. War in Indochina (1960–1965)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985399
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On the morning of 2 December 1977, the General Secretary of the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Erich Honecker, met in his Presidential Palace in East Berlin with high-ranking officials from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV). After the leader of the newly created Vietnamese Communist state, Le Duan, had thanked Honecker for East German fraternal support and declared that the GDR and SRV were the "Eastern and Western outposts of socialism," he began to reminisce about the genesis of the recently ended war against the United States. Placing the event within a wider framework, he argued that the Communist world's lack of unity had facilitated U.S. escalation. "Already
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/43/image/coversmallThrough the Lens of the Marxist-Leninist Dispute: East German Policy toward North Vietnam on the Eve of the U.S. War in Indochina (1960–1965)2026-03-18text/htmlen-USThrough the Lens of the Marxist-Leninist Dispute: East German Policy toward North Vietnam on the Eve of the U.S. War in Indochina (1960–1965)2026-03-182026TWOProject MUSE®1795292026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-18The Cold War and the Soviet KGB's Same-Sex Entrapment Operations in the 1950s and 1960s: The Perpetrator in Focus
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985400
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In August 1963, The New York Times informed its readers that a U.S. citizen had been arrested in the USSR.1 According to the newspaper, the Soviet travel agency Intourist had announced that Bernard L. Koten, the leader of a travel group who had been reported missing in Kyiv, had been arrested on charges of homosexual activity with a Soviet citizen. Koten had disappeared two days earlier, when he failed to board an Aeroflot flight to Vienna with his group. He was not just a random tourist in the Soviet Union: He had traveled there many times and spoke Russian fluently, having studied at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Linguistics in the 1930s. In the 1940s, he had served as the research director of the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/43/image/coversmallThe Cold War and the Soviet KGB's Same-Sex Entrapment Operations in the 1950s and 1960s: The Perpetrator in Focus2026-03-18text/htmlen-USThe Cold War and the Soviet KGB's Same-Sex Entrapment Operations in the 1950s and 1960s: The Perpetrator in Focus2026-03-182026TWOProject MUSE®1342602026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-18Handling Communist Captives: U.S. Military Authorities and the Treatment of Enemy POWs during the Korean War
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985401
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In December 1952, Otto Lehner, a Swiss delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in charge of the mission in South Korea, visited camps holding North Korean and Chinese prisoners of war (POWs). His report detailed several alleged acts of abuse perpetrated against prisoners in U.S. captivity. Lehner said that when he questioned camp authorities about the use of force, a U.S. junior officer supposedly claimed, "We never torture POWs, but we question them sometimes until they scream."1 Seizing on this alleged statement, Lehner accused the U.S. military of failing to comply with the 1949 Geneva Conventions. In response, the U.S.-led United Nations Command (UNC) publicly denounced the finding but
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/43/image/coversmallHandling Communist Captives: U.S. Military Authorities and the Treatment of Enemy POWs during the Korean War2026-03-18text/htmlen-USHandling Communist Captives: U.S. Military Authorities and the Treatment of Enemy POWs during the Korean War2026-03-182026TWOProject MUSE®1277522026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-18Alger Hiss and Soviet Espionage Operations: A Failed Quest to Rewrite History
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985402
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In this new book Rewriting Hisstory: A Fifty-Year Journey to Uncover the Truth About Alger Hiss, the journalist Jeff Kisseloff sets out to provide a new history of Alger Hiss's conviction on perjury charges in 1950. The statute of limitations for espionage had expired by 1950, but the perjury conviction was essentially equivalent to saying that Hiss had been a Soviet spy in the 1930s and 1940s. Kisseloff vehemently disagrees with that verdict, and he intends Hisstory to provide a total exoneration of Hiss. He depicts Hiss as a conventional New Deal liberal who never participated in the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and was never even closely associated with Communists. He insists that Hiss was never involved in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/43/image/coversmallAlger Hiss and Soviet Espionage Operations: A Failed Quest to Rewrite History2026-03-18text/htmlen-USAlger Hiss and Soviet Espionage Operations: A Failed Quest to Rewrite History2026-03-182026TWOProject MUSE®2222702026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-18The Routledge Handbook of Balkan and Southeast European History ed. by John R. Lampe and Ulf Brunnbauer (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985403
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This recently published anthology of 52 brief essays on the history of the Balkans (the region alternatively called "Southeastern Europe") is wide ranging. Among the topics covered here are politics, history, geography, economics, trade, and culture. The editors have brought together several dozen scholars from the Balkans, Western Europe, and North America to provide a smorgasbord of concise analyses of the diverse history, cultures, languages, religions, and ethnicities of Balkan societies. The time span ranges from medieval times to the current day, but the large majority of chapters deal at least partly with the twentieth century, including important coverage of the Second World War and the Cold War. The book
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/43/image/coversmallThe Routledge Handbook of Balkan and Southeast European History ed. by John R. Lampe and Ulf Brunnbauer (review)2026-03-18text/htmlen-USThe Routledge Handbook of Balkan and Southeast European History ed. by John R. Lampe and Ulf Brunnbauer (review)2026-03-182026TWOProject MUSE®171272026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-18The Determined Spy: The Turbulent Life and Times of CIA Pioneer Frank Wisner by Douglas Waller (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985404
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Veteran journalist Douglas Waller has written the definitive biography of a man who is largely unknown in the United States but who nonetheless had a profound influence on U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. In early September 1948, Waller's subject — Frank Gardiner Wisner — became head of the newly formed Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), which, despite being a department of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), was initially controlled by the State Department, where it was temporarily housed. Not until October 1950 did the CIA gain de facto jurisdiction over the OPC. Both before and after that time, Wisner's office was responsible for countering the new U.S. adversary, the Soviet Union, by any means
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/43/image/coversmallThe Determined Spy: The Turbulent Life and Times of CIA Pioneer Frank Wisner by Douglas Waller (review)2026-03-18text/htmlen-USThe Determined Spy: The Turbulent Life and Times of CIA Pioneer Frank Wisner by Douglas Waller (review)2026-03-182026TWOProject MUSE®102622026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-18Sister City Diplomacy: Community Engagement in U.S.–Russian Relations from the Cold War to Today by Douglas C. Nord (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985405
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Douglas C. Nord's book on sister city diplomacy in the late Cold War era and beyond has many merits. It represents an important turn from the traditional study of diplomacy and strategic competition toward a focus on non-state actors. The emergence of such actors — especially in the Soviet/Russian context, where they were never fully independent — signaled more than the growing influence of grassroots initiatives or the weakening of the state. It underscored the exhaustion of great-power rivalry itself: the inability of professional diplomats to move beyond strategic gridlock, the arms race, and mutual fear. Not surprisingly, Nord includes the story of Samantha Smith, the young schoolgirl from the U.S. state of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/43/image/coversmallSister City Diplomacy: Community Engagement in U.S.–Russian Relations from the Cold War to Today by Douglas C. Nord (review)2026-03-18text/htmlen-USSister City Diplomacy: Community Engagement in U.S.–Russian Relations from the Cold War to Today by Douglas C. Nord (review)2026-03-182026TWOProject MUSE®75432026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-18Erratum
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985406
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The "Contributors" list at the beginning of the Summer 2025 issue (Vol. 27, No. 3) mistakenly identified Ryan Shaffer (the author of a review essay) as president of the Japan America Society. The correct listing should have been "Ryan Shaffer is an independent scholar and co-editor of the journal Global Change: Peace & Security." The identification has been corrected online. The identification has been corrected online, and can be viewed here:
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/43/image/coversmallErratum2026-03-18text/htmlen-USErratum2026-03-182026TWOProject MUSE®18172026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-18