Americanization of Russian Geometric Education and Descriptive Geometry

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 38-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Сальков ◽  
Nikolay Sal'kov

70 years ago, the bloodiest of wars had ended. Literally, the next day the USA started the ruthless Cold war against the USSR. Goal – to destroy the USSR as political and military enemy. Ironically, it was the Russian Empire (and the Soviet Union – its successor) that first in the world recognized the USA as an independent state. In 1991, the goal was achieved. Russia considered the cold war over, and the USA a partner in all matters. In vain. It is no secret the CIA felt home in Russian governmental buildings. It is no secret that Department of State advisers sat in every Russian Ministry. Unsurprisingly, imposed reforms have led to destruction of industry, agriculture, and medicine. The country was flooded with imports, and Russia has lost the basic security of state. Obviously, the same benefactors from the CIA forced the Ministry of Education and Science to adopt the surrogate instead of the Soviet system of education. Moreover, the well-wishers perfectly knew that this surrogate was of very low quality. Introduction of the American system of education instead of the Soviet one is the manifestation of the cold war. Artificial confrontation of computer graphics vs. descriptive geometry arose. Enforced antagonism resulted in elimination of teaching descriptive geometry in many areas. Known: computers and computer graphics come from the USA. Note that geometry experts do not oppose to the use of computer graphics. More obscure is the position of some of our partners, when they advocate destruction of science in favor of a drawing instrument. In this mortal combat of geeks, the author sees a manifestation of the same cold war that the United States maintains with Russia. Deduction: it is so because computer graphics took all its geometric methods of constructing from descriptive geometry. Minimal program of overcoming this geometric crisis in higher education is provided.

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Peacock

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the relationship between childhood, consumption and the Cold War in 1950s America and the Soviet Union. The author argues that Soviet and American leaders, businessmen, and politicians worked hard to convince parents that buying things for their children offered the easiest way to raise good American and Soviet kids and to do their part in waging the economic battles of the Cold War. The author explores how consumption became a Cold War battleground in the late 1950s and suggests that the history of childhood and Cold War consumption alters the way we understand the conflict itself. Design/Methodology/Approach – Archival research in the USA and the Russian Federation along with close readings of Soviet and American advertisements offer sources for understanding the global discourse of consumption in the 1950s and 1960s. Findings – Leaders, advertisers, and propagandists in the Soviet Union and the USA used the same images in the same ways to sell the ethos of consumption to their populations. They did this to sell the Cold War, to bolster the status quo, and to make profits. Originality/Value – This paper offers a previously unexplored, transnational perspective on the role that consumption and the image of the child played in shaping the Cold War both domestically and abroad.


1986 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 163-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Kubalkova ◽  
A. A. Cruickshank

In the historiography of the Cold War a small but active group of American historians influenced by New Left radicalism rejected the view prevailing in the USA at the time in regard to the assignation of responsibility for the beginning and continuation of the Cold War.1 Although their reasoning took them along different routes and via different perceptions as to key dates and events, there were certain features all US revisionists had in common (some more generally recognized than others). Heavily involved as they were in the analysis of the US socio-economic system, the Soviet Union was largely left out of their concerns and it was the United States who had been found the ‘guilty’ party. The revisionists, of course inadvertently, corroborated Soviet conclusions, a fact gratefully acknowledged by Soviet writers.2


Author(s):  
Maryna Bessonova

The most widespread plots interpreted as the beginning of the Cold War are the events that took place in 1946: February 9 – J. Stalin’s speech to the electorate in Moscow; February 22 – the American charge d’Affaires in the Soviet Union G. Kennan’s “long telegram”; March 5 – W. Churchill’s speech in Fulton (the USA); September 27 – the Soviet Ambassador in the United States N. Novikov’s “long telegram”. But there was an earlier event, so called “Gouzenko affair”, which is almost unknown for the Ukrainian historiography. On September 5, 1945, Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk of the Soviet embassy to Canada, defected to the Canadian side with more than a hundred secret documents that proved the USSR’s espionage activities in the countries of North America. Information about the network of Soviet agents caused a real panic in the West and was perceived as a real start of the Cold War. In the article, there is made an attempt to review the main events related to the Gouzenko affair and to identify the dominant interpretations of this case in contemporary historical writings. One can find different interpretations of the reasons and the consequences of Gouzenko’s defection which dramatically affected the history of the world. One of the main vivid results was an anti-communist hysteria in the West which was caused by the investigation that Canadian, American and British public officials and eminent scientists were recruited by the Soviet Union as agents for the atomic espionage. For Canada, the Gouzenko affair had an unprecedented affect because on the one hand it led to the closer relations with the United States in the sphere of security and defense, and on the other hand Canada was involved into the international scandal and used this case as a moment to start more activities on the international arena. It has been also found that the Canadian and American studies about Gouzenko affair are focused on the fact that the Allies on the anti-Hitler coalition need to take a fresh look at security and further cooperation with the USSR, while the overwhelming majority of Russian publications is focused on the very fact of betrayal of Igor Gouzenko.


2020 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 123-144
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Czornik

The U.S. accession to the Second World War and indisputable victory initiated a new stage in the history of the United States. The country took a superpower position next to the USSR. The USA became the leading force of the democratic and capitalist world. During the Cold War, competing with the Soviet Union for influence in the global scale, the United States effectively spread its ideology, political system model, and value system. A number of determinants of an internal nature, both objective and subjective, influenced the shape of the foreign policy of the USA during the Cold War.


2004 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Critchlow

Public diplomacy in its many forms proved a great asset for the United States during the Cold War. A new book by Yale Richmond, a retired U.S. official who for many years was involved with policy toward the Soviet Union, including U.S. Soviet exchanges, highlights the importance of the “cultural” dimension of the Cold War. Richmond focuses on the U.S. side of the U.S. Soviet exchanges, but he also provides interesting comments about Soviet policy, drawing on newly declassified materials from the former Soviet archives. The exchanges, information programs, and other activities undertaken by the U.S. Information Agency and the Department of State played a crucial role in spreading democratic ideas and values within the Soviet bloc. Candid and balanced broadcasts were far more effective than the heavy—handed propaganda that was used initially. The record of public diplomacy during the Cold War provides some important lessons for U.S. foreign policy makers in the post—Cold War world.


Author(s):  
D. S. Foglesong

Histories of the end of the Cold War that have focused on the roles of the top leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union have neglected an important dimension of the ending of the antagonism between the West and the East. Before Ronald Reagan and M.S. Gorbachev met at Geneva in November 1985, citizens of the USA, the USSR, and European nations who were alarmed by the danger of nuclear war formed new organizations dedicated to overcoming the hostility between their nations. British members of European Nuclear Disarmament and American activists in groups such as Beyond War and Peace Links established connections to independent groups in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union as well as the Committee of Soviet Women and the Committee for the Defense of Peace in the USSR. These relationships made it possible to organize very ambitious citizen diplomacy projects. Hundreds of Soviet citizens made extensive speaking tours in the United States while numerous British and American activists visited the Soviet Union. These exchanges dispelled negative stereotypes and helped to end the mutual demonization that had been central to the Cold War since the late 1940s. Analysis of the experiences of the citizen diplomats in the 1980s yields lessons for contemporary international relations about the importance of avoiding one-sided blame for conflicts and the need to move beyond recriminations about the past in order to develop cooperation in the present and future.


Author(s):  
Thomas J. Christensen

In brute-force struggles for survival, such as the two world wars, disorganization and divisions within an enemy alliance are to one's own advantage. However, most international security politics involve coercive diplomacy and negotiations short of all-out war. This book demonstrates that when states are engaged in coercive diplomacy—combining threats and assurances to influence the behavior of real or potential adversaries—divisions, rivalries, and lack of coordination within the opposing camp often make it more difficult to prevent the onset of regional conflicts, to prevent existing conflicts from escalating, and to negotiate the end to those conflicts promptly. Focusing on relations between the Communist and anti-Communist alliances in Asia during the Cold War, the book explores how internal divisions and lack of cohesion in the two alliances complicated and undercut coercive diplomacy by sending confusing signals about strength, resolve, and intent. In the case of the Communist camp, internal mistrust and rivalries catalyzed the movement's aggressiveness in ways that we would not have expected from a more cohesive movement under Moscow's clear control. Reviewing newly available archival material, the book examines the instability in relations across the Asian Cold War divide, and sheds new light on the Korean and Vietnam wars. While recognizing clear differences between the Cold War and post-Cold War environments, the book investigates how efforts to adjust burden-sharing roles among the United States and its Asian security partners have complicated U.S. security relations with the People's Republic of China since the collapse of the Soviet Union.


This book uses trust—with its emotional and predictive aspects—to explore international relations in the second half of the Cold War, beginning with the late 1960s. The détente of the 1970s led to the development of some limited trust between the United States and the Soviet Union, which lessened international tensions and enabled advances in areas such as arms control. However, it also created uncertainty in other areas, especially on the part of smaller states that depended on their alliance leaders for protection. The chapters in this volume look at how the “emotional” side of the conflict affected the dynamics of various Cold War relations: between the superpowers, within the two ideological blocs, and inside individual countries on the margins of the East–West confrontation.


Author(s):  
Anne Searcy

During the Cold War, the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union developed cultural exchange programs, in which they sent performing artists abroad in order to generate goodwill for their countries. Ballet companies were frequently called on to serve in these programs, particularly in the direct Soviet-American exchange. This book analyzes four of the early ballet exchange tours, demonstrating how this series of encounters changed both geopolitical relations and the history of dance. The ballet tours were enormously popular. Performances functioned as an important symbolic meeting point for Soviet and American officials, creating goodwill and normalizing relations between the two countries in an era when nuclear conflict was a real threat. At the same time, Soviet and American audiences did not understand ballet in the same way. As American companies toured in the Soviet Union and vice versa, audiences saw the performances through the lens of their own local aesthetics. Ballet in the Cold War introduces the concept of transliteration to understand this process, showing how much power viewers wielded in the exchange and explaining how the dynamics of the Cold War continue to shape ballet today.


Author(s):  
Benjamin Tromly

During the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, the United States government unleashed covert operations intended to weaken the Soviet Union. As part of these efforts, the CIA undertook support of Russian exiles, populations uprooted either during World War II or by the Russian Revolution decades before. No one seemed better prepared to fight in the American secret war against communism than the uprooted Russians, whom the CIA directed to carry out propaganda, espionage, and subversion operations from their home base in West Germany. Yet the American engagement of Russian exiles had unpredictable outcomes. Drawing on recently declassified and previously untapped sources, Cold War Exiles and the CIA examines how the CIA’s Russian operations became entangled with the internal struggles of Russia abroad and also the espionage wars of the superpowers in divided Germany. What resulted was a transnational political sphere involving different groups of Russian exiles, American and German anti-communists, and spies operating on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Inadvertently, CIA’s patronage of Russian exiles forged a complex sub-front in the wider Cold War, demonstrating the ways in which the hostilities of the Cold War played out in ancillary conflicts involving proxies and non-state actors.


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