Suchergebnisse

"This book analyzes the political experience of a small and unique American ethnic group-American Latvians. This community was constituted by post-World War II political refugees, who fled Communism and arrived in the United States seeking safety and protection. For decades, they insisted on preserving their ethnic identity and therefore did not call themselves Latvian Americans. Instead, they formed a distinctive double identity, that is, they blended into the American society economically and socially, but refused to become assimilated culturally and politically. The book offers a detailed look into the life of this community of political refugees, which also provides a novel perspective on the Cold War as experienced by certain ethnic groups. From a theoretical point of view, the book makes two major contributions. First, it reasserts the need to understand the generalized category of "white Americans" or "white ethnics" with more nuance and attention to differences, and, second, it strengthens the so-called realist claim that refugees are not like other immigrants. In order to achieve these goals, the book provides compelling descriptions and interpretations of the most politically relevant moments in the experience of American Latvians in the period between the 1950s and the 1990s. Concretely, the book deals with topics as the American Latvians' anti-communist activism, the impact of the hunt for Nazis on Latvian emigres, the Soviet Union's anti-emigre propaganda campaigns and the exiled Latvians' involvement in the politics of national liberation in Latvia. The author strives to reveal the complexity of the refugee experience in the United States during the Cold War and its aftermath. Since such aspects of the life of ethnic groups in the United States have not been sufficiently studied, this book makes a substantial contribution to a fuller understanding of American immigration history and sociology of ethnic groups. It is well written, expertly organized, and will be of interest to a large readership at many levels of academia."--Provided by publisher.

Taking a new look at two controversial topics, American anti-Communism and the Cold War, this book reveals the little known history of anti-Communism in the US from the point of view of ethnic refugee/émigré groups, and also offers insight into the lives of minority groups that have hitherto not received scholarly attention.

This article shows that foreign tourism to the USSR from the 1950s on evolved from a political propaganda tool into what is defined in tourism studies as "ethnic tourism." Ethnic tourism designates a type of exposure that centers on experiencing a different and presumably "authentic" ethnic culture. This change in the nature of Soviet foreign tourism was particularly explicit in the ways the Soviet authorities organized and framed travel to peripheries such as the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic for the sake of earning profit for the Soviet state. As tourism to Latvia increased and drew a larger and more diverse tourist population, the ethnic uniqueness of Latvians and their culture took precedence over demonstrations of the general superiority of Communist society. These arguments are substantiated with archival materials from the Riga branch of Inturist (the Central Administration of Foreign Tourism under the USSR Council of Ministers) stored in Latvia's Central State Archives in Riga.

This article analyzes initiatives of Gerald Ford's presidential administration toward nationalities or the so-called white ethnics against the backdrop of the legacy of Richard Nixon and the Republican Party's ethnic politics of the 1960s. Using archival and interview materials, it demonstrates that Gerald Ford intended to improve the relationship between the President's office and the ethnics who were involved in the Republican Party's structures. He consciously tried to respond to ethnics' political concerns and even created a special position on his staff for working with the nationalities. While in office and during the election campaign of 1976, Ford succeeded in engaging the ethnics and in demonstrating his will to address their needs on the domestic "front." He failed, however, to fully appreciate the importance of foreign policy to the nationalities. The article proposes that today, as in the 1970s, the American political establishment would benefit from recognizing international issues as crucial elements of white ethnics' or nationalities' political behavior.

This article discusses the Soviet Union's use of propaganda warfare during the Cold War, focusing on the specific case of Soviet Latvia. Archival materials from recently opened archives in the former USSR show that the Soviet Union pursued a methodical ideological campaign against certain groups of U.S. citizens, including the post-World War II political refugees from Latvia. The main institution charged with this task was the Liaison Committee for the Cultural Relations with Countrymen Abroad (LCCR), which was highly influential at the time. Archival materials allow scholars to examine the LCCR's history, methods, and goals, as well as its successes and failures. Among the findings in the article is the importance the Soviet Union attached to propaganda and to programs to counter and discredit "anti-Soviet" émigré organizations.

The process of transitional justice in Latvia after 1991 and the public debates that surrounded it created a number of controversies. One such notable conflict dealt with lustration, and it involved Latvia's political establishment and intelligentsia. While the politicians supported the public's right to have full access to the secret KGB files, the intellectuals demanded that Latvia's society should be protected from making mistakes in its judgments and therefore the available documentation should be studied first by state-appointed experts. Each position addressed the issue of lustration from a distinctive perspective, and these reflected not merely political disagreements. Instead, they reflected conflicts of vision that had deep historical roots. Adapted from the source document.

This article discusses the Soviet Union's use of propaganda warfare during the Cold War, focusing on the specific case of Soviet Latvia. Archival materials from recently opened archives in the former USSR show that the Soviet Union pursued a methodical ideological campaign against certain groups of U.S. citizens, including the post-World War II political refugees from Latvia. The main institution charged with this task was the Liaison Committee for the Cultural Relations with Countrymen Abroad (LCCR), which was highly influential at the time. Archival materials allow scholars to examine the LCCR's history, methods, and goals, as well as its successes and failures. Among the findings in the article is the importance the Soviet Union attached to propaganda and to programs to counter and discredit "anti-Soviet" emigre organizations. Adapted from the source document.

The article proposes a theoretical approach that analyzes nationalist ideologies as forces creating unique subjectivities. Such a perspective develops from combining Louis Althusser s ideas about ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses with Michel Foucault s insights on modern bio-power. It is suggested that the core of any nationalism is its political construction of subjective consciousness and body. With illustrations from mainly European nationalisms, it is reflected that there is a recognizable set of methods that most nationalist ideologies use to form their subjects. They construct, on the one hand, national consciousness by inventing national history, language and culture, and, on the other, national body using modern scientific knowledge about individuals and populations. In the end, the article suggests a new definition of nationalism that could be used in future empirical research.

Abstract  This article analyzes the conflict that emerged regarding the so‐called US‐USSR "cultural contacts" during the Cold War within the exile community of American Latvians. While most of the American political and cultural elites saw cultural exchanges with the Soviets as beneficial, the reactions of the émigrés were much more controversial and polarizing. This study reveals the unrecognized side of the Cold War politics as experienced by the refugee groups. The study employs American, Latvian and Soviet publications, memoirs, interviews and archival materials.