Cold War

The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, that started in 1947, two years after the end of World War II and lasted to 1991. The conflict was based on the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers, following their roles as the Allies of World War II that led to victory against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945.

At the end of World War II, English writer George Orwell used cold war, as a general term, in his essay "You and the Atomic Bomb", published 19 October 1945 in the British newspaper Tribune. Contemplating a world living in the shadow of the threat of nuclear warfare, Orwell looked at James Burnham's predictions of a polarized world, writing:

Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery... James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications—that is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of "cold war" with its neighbours.

In The Observer of 10 March 1946, Orwell wrote, "after the Moscow conference last December, Russia began to make a 'cold war' on Britain and the British Empire."

The first use of the term to describe the specific post-war geopolitical confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States came in a speech by Bernard Baruch, an influential advisor to Democratic presidents, on 16 April 1947. The speech, written by journalist Herbert Bayard Swope,proclaimed, "Let us not be deceived: we are today in the midst of a cold war.u

 In June 1950, the first military action of the Cold War began when the Soviet-backed North Korean People's Army invaded its pro-Western neighbor to the south. Many American officials feared this was the first step in a communist campaign to take over the world and deemed that nonintervention was not an option.

Duncan White has written a book that manages to be both academically rich while reading like a thriller. In the hands of a lesser writer this effort might not have worked, but the prose deftly conveys the complexity of things like the internally twisted logic of Soviet ideology while keeping the reader wanting to read more. Starting with Orwell, Koestler and Spender's experiences during the Spanish Civil War, the book relies on the intimacy of biography to reveal larger trends in the ideological battle that was the Cold War. This approach works. Instead of simply detailing the myriad ways in which the KGB and CIA leveraged the work of writers (and used them as pawns), White's intimate portraits show these writers to be active, thinking subjects who make choices within the historical contexts in which they lived. The result is a narrative that exposes both sides: the power of institutions and humanity of people that confront them.

"In this brilliant account of the literary war within the Cold War, novelists and poets become embroiled in a dangerous game of betrayal, espionage, and conspiracy at the heart of the vicious conflict fought between the Soviet Union and the West

During the Cold War, literature was both sword and noose. Novels, essays, and poems could win the hearts and minds of those caught between the competing creeds of capitalism and communism. They could also lead to blacklisting, exile, imprisonment, or execution for their authors if they offended those in power. The clandestine intelligence services of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union recruited secret agents and established vast propaganda networks devoted to literary warfare. But the battles were personal, too: friends turned on one another, lovers were split by political fissures, artists were undermined by inadvertent complicities. And while literary battles were fought in print, sometimes the pen was exchanged for a gun, the bookstore for the battlefield.

In Cold Warriors, Duncan White vividly chronicles how this ferocious intellectual struggle was waged on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Among those involved were George Orwell, Stephen Spender, Mary McCarthy, Graham Greene, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, John le Carré, Anna Akhmatova, Richard Wright, Ernest Hemingway, Boris Pasternak, Gioconda Belli, and Václav Havel. Here, too, are the spies, government officials, military officers, publishers, politicians, and critics who helped turn words into weapons at a time when the stakes could not have been higher.

Drawing upon years of archival research and the latest declassified intelligence, Cold Warriors is both a gripping saga of prose and politics, and a welcome reminder that--at a moment when ignorance is all too frequently celebrated and reading is seen as increasingly irrelevant--writers and books can change the world."

The Cold War may have been a conflict of ideas, but imposing those ideas on the enemy through military means was not an option. As Kenneth Osgood writes in Total Cold War, the existence of nuclear weapons meant that “the Cold War, more than any other conflict in human history, was channeled into nonmilitary modes of combat, particularly ideological and symbolic ones.”Each side therefore used various forms of propaganda and disinformation "as a way to undermine the way its enemy organized its own society. Some of this propaganda was crude and, as such, ineffective. But literature was another matter, for it had a more sophisticated power to persuade. In reading Animal Farm, with its allegory of a revolution gone awry, exploited by corrupt and self-serving leaders interested only in consolidating their own power, Polish citizens might begin to question the received truths of their rulers."

Espionage stories  and cold war. A comprehensive account of Philby and the Cambridge spies. 

"Book overview

A novelist wouldn't dare invent the story contained herein. That a son of the British establishment could, during a 30 year secret service career, be a Communist agent is too far-fetched for fiction. Here's the story of how Philby did it, of what he did & its consequences; of how he betrayed his country, service, friends & the class which nurtured, shaped & protected him.

Authors' Preface

Introduction

1. Beginnings

The man in Dzerzinsky Square

Boyhood of three spies

The slave of God

The Cambridge Marxists

Commitment in Vienna

Joining the establishment

2. Penetration

The Spanish decoration

The phony war

The secret world

The rise of Kim Philby

3. Exploitation

The new enemy

The Volkov incident

The priceless secrets

The Albanian subversion

4. Downfall

Crack-up

Getaway

The secret trial

A field agent?

Philby's comeback

Endgame in Beirut

Through the curtain

In a memoir named spycatcher by Peter wright a former British mi5agent few decades back.he alleged that in the 60’s even Harold Macmillan the prime minister was working for KGB.the book is still banned in Britain & economist wrote a review with a blank page on spycatcher with a couple of sentences which said law is an ass

"A minor classic in its laconic, spare, compelling evocation by a participant of the shifting moods and maneuvers of the most dangerous moment in human history." —Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.During the thirteen days in October 1962 when the United States confronted the Soviet Union over its installation of missiles in Cuba, few people shared the behind-the-scenes story as it is told here by the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy. In this unique account, he describes each of the participants during the sometimes hour-to-hour negotiations, with particular attention to the actions and views of his brother, President John F. Kennedy. In a new foreword, the distinguished historian and Kennedy adviser Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., discusses the book's enduring importance and the significance of new information about the crisis that has come to light, especially from the Soviet Union."

Thanks to Philips Abraham Sir for so much of insight. 

Came across this list shared in Cochi Book Club . Not sure if it is helpful.

General Overviews

1. The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis

2. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times by Odd Arne Westad

3. The Cold War: A World History by Odd Arne Westad

Key Figures and Leaders

4. Khrushchev: The Man and His Era by William Taubman

5. Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended by Jack F. Matlock Jr.

6. Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power by Robert Dallek

Espionage and Intelligence

7. The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin

8. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré

9. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner

10. The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War by Ben Macintyre

Military and Strategic Aspects

11. Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser

12. The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman

Cultural and Social Dimensions

13. One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War by Michael Dobbs

14. The Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 by Anne Applebaum

15. From Yalta to Berlin: The Cold War Struggle over Germany by W.R. Smyser

Regional Studies and Case Studies

16. The Vietnam War: An Intimate History by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns

17. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History by John Lewis Gaddis

18. The Cold War in the Third World edited by Robert J. McMahon

Cold War's End and Aftermath

19. Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire by Victor Sebestyen

20. The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall by Mary Elise Sarotte

Memoirs and Personal Accounts

21. Memoirs by Mikhail Gorbachev

22. The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy by Jussi Hanhimäki

Academic and Theoretical Perspectives

23. Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961 by Christina Klein

24. Cold War: The American Crusade Against World Communism, 1945-1991 by James R. Cronin