Cold War Documents - JMM384

• Title: Studená válka v dokumentech
• Guaranteed by: Department of North American Studies (23-KAS)
• Faculty: Faculty of Social Sciences
• Actual: from 2007 to 2007
• Semester: summer
• E-Credits: 5
• Examination process: summer s.:
• Hours per week, examination: summer s.:0/2, Ex [HT]
• Extent per academic year: 26 [hours]
• Capacity: unknown / unknown (unknown)
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: not taught
• Language: Czech
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan; enabled for web enrollment
• Guarantor: doc. PhDr. Vít Smetana, Ph.D.

Annotation

Last update: doc. PhDr. Vít Smetana, Ph.D. (05.02.2012)

This course is drawn up as one-semestral seminar, concluded by an exam. Its major content comprises detailed analysis of strategic and diplomatic documents related to the key peripetias of the bipolar conflict that spanned over four and a half decades. The major aim of the course is to acquire basic skills of research work with primary sources of political and diplomatic character - their thorough critique, setting them into relevant contexts and subsequently providing their adequate interpretation (or interpretations). This professional training is based on the use of attractive documentary material in English, Czech and Russian (its knowledge is welcome, but not necessary) - mostly declassified in last 20 years.

Literature

Last update: doc. PhDr. Vít Smetana, Ph.D. (05.02.2012)

Main editions of documents out of which the analysed documents will be selected:

Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars - http://cwihp.si.edu/cwihplib.nsf/ / - various editions of documents.

Československo-sovětské vztahy v diplomatických jednáních 1939-1945, díl 2, Praha, Státní ústřední archiv v Praze 1999.

ČSR a SSSR 1945-1948. Dokumenty mezivládních jednání, eds. K. Kaplan - A. Špiritová, Brno, Doplněk 1997.

Documents on British Policy Overseas, Series I-III, London, H.M.S.O. 1984-1997.

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1945-1975, Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office 1967-2002.

Churchill and Roosevelt, the Complete Correspondence, 3 Vols., ed. W. F. Kimball, Princeton (NJ), Princeton University Press 1984.

Origins of the Cold War. The Novikov, Kennan, and Roberts "Long Telegrams" of 1946, ed. K. M. Jensen, Washington, United States Institute of Peace 1991.

Prague - Washington - Prague. Reports from the United States Embassy in Czechoslovakia, November - December 1989, ed. V. Prečan, Prague, Václav Havel Library 2004.

Soveshchaaniia Kominforma, 1947, 1948, 1949. Dokumenty i materialy, Moskva, Rosspen 1998.

Sovetskii faktor v vostochnoi Evrope 1944-1953, 2 toma, ed. T. V. Volokitina et al., Moskva Rosspen 1999, 2002.

Sovetskii Soiuz i vengerskii krizis 1956 goda. Dokumenty, Moskva, Rosspen 1998.

SSSR i germanskii vopros 1941-1949. Dokumenty iz archiva vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi federacii, eds. G. P. Kynin and J. Laufer, 3 toma, Moskva, Mezhdunarodnyie otnosheniia 1996-.

Studená válka 1954-1964. Sovětské dokumenty v českých archivech, eds. M. Reiman - P. Luňák, Brno, Doplněk 2000.

The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962. A National Security Archive Documents Reader, eds. L. Chang and P. Kornbluch, New York, The New Press 1998.

The Democratic Revolution in Czechoslovakia: Its Precondition, Course, and Immediate Repercussions, 1987-89, eds. V. Prečan with D. Paton, Prague, National Security Archive - Czechoslovak Documentation Centre - Institute of Contemporary History 1999.

The Kennedy Tapes. Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis, eds. E. R. May & P. D. Zelikow, Cambridge (Mass.) - London, Harvard University Press 1997.

The Suez Crisis, eds. A. Gorst & L. Johnman, London, Routledge 1997.

Vostochnaia Evropa v dokumentach rossiiskich archivov 1944-1953, 2 toma, 1944-1948, Moskva - Novosibirsk, Sibirskij chronograf 1997-1998.

further, the memoirs of Charles Bohlen, Averell Harriman, George Kennan, Paul H. Nitze, McGeorge Bundy, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinskéi, Nikita Chrushchev, Anatolii Dobrynin, Andrei Gromyko, Vadim Medvedev, Felix Chuev's edition of his talks with Molotov etc.

Literature - recommended (selection):

Beschloss, Michael R.: The Crisis Years. Kennedy and Khruschev 1960-1963, New York, Edward Burlingame Books 1991.

Durman, Karel: Útěk od praporů. Kreml a krize impéria 1964-1991, Praha, Karolinum 1998.

Gaddis, John Lewis: We Now Know. Rethinking Cold War History, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1997.

Gaddis, John Lewis: The United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations, Provocations, New York - Oxford, Oxford University Press 1992.

Holloway, David: Stalin and the Bomb, New Haven - London, Yale University Press 1994.

Jegorova, N. I. - Chubarian, A. O. (eds.): Cholodnaia voina 1945-1963 gg. Istoricheskaia perspektiva, Moskva, Olma-press 2003.

Larres, Klaus: Churchill's Cold War. The Politics of Personal Diplomacy, New Haven - London, Yale University Press 2002.

Leffler, Melvyn P.: For the Soul of Mankind. The United States, the Soviet Union and the Cold War, New York, Hill and Wang 2007.

Lundestad, Geir: East, West, North, South. Major Developments in International Politics since 1945. Oxford - New York, Oxford University Press 1999.

Mastny, Vojtech: The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity, Oxford - New York, Oxford University Press 1996.

Njolstad, Olav (ed.): The Last Decade of the Cold War. From Conflict Escalation to Conflict Transformation, London - New York, Frank Cass 2004.

Taubman, William: Khrushchev. The Man and His Era, London, Simon & Schuster 2003.

Walker, Martin: The Cold War. And the Making of the Modern World, London, Vintage 1994.

Trachtenberg, Mark: A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963, Princeton (N.J) - Chichester, Princeton University Press 1999.

Zubok, Vladislav - Pleshakov Constantine: Inside the Kremlin's Cold War, Cambridge (Mass.) - London, Harvard University Press 1996.

Zubok, Vladislav M.: A Failed Empire. The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev, Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press 2007.

Requirements to the exam

Last update: doc. PhDr. Vít Smetana, Ph.D. (05.02.2012)

1) 2 seminar presentations (15-20 minutes each) analysing assigned documents

2) preparation for each seminar (i.e. reading of the relevant collection of documents) and active participation in discussions

3) final paper, approximately 3-4 thousand words long

The number of oral presentations may vary, depending on the number of seminar participants. The topic of the written paper should be first consulted with the seminar organizer/lecturer. The paper should be based on at least four sources (books, articles), out of which at least one should be a primary source (diary, documentary edition, memoir, archival documents, etc.).

Syllabus

Last update: doc. PhDr. Vít Smetana, Ph.D. (05.02.2012)

1. The roots of the Cold War (Soviet strategic planning in the final stages of World War II, U.S. proto-containment, correspondence between Churchill and Roosevelt in 1944-45)

2. The key documents related to the beginning of the Cold War (Kennan, Roberts, Novikov, Churchill, Byrnes)

3. The Soviet Union at international conferences, 1945-47

4. Czechoslovakia's road to the Eastern bloc (Beneš's negotiations in Moscow in 1943 and 1945, Czechoslovakia's uranium ore, the Marshall Plan, the Communist coup of February 1948)

5. The Soviet threat in early 1950s - perceptions and reality (NSC-68, the Moscow summit in January 1951)

6. The Korean War - prelude to a global conflict?

7. 1956 - two crises with different results (Suez X Hungary and Poland 1956)

8. Soviet strategic planning in the 1950s and 1960s

9. Two Berlin crises - a comparison

10.Cuban missile crisis in 1962 - diplomacy and intelligence under the threat of nuclear holocaust

11.The Prague spring in international context

12.Détente and the "second" Cold War in the hitherto declassified documents

13.1989: annus mirabilis in U.S. and Soviet diplomatic reports