When bananas were imported once or twice a year, the queues stretched further than I had ever seen. My brother and I were desperate to get out. We'd hang around the checkpoints, hoping to befriend a West Berliner. Occasionally, they took pity and sent us packages. But escaping was rare and expensive. Most who managed it had paid thousands of marks.
We in the west used to play dirty and during the cold war, we were good at it. Nowadays, we leave grey-zone tactics and hybrid warfare to Russia, which is winning the disinformation war. Europe's pride in playing by the rules might just be democracy's achilles heel. The Berlin airlift is a good example of what we once did well and have since forgotten.
Following the end of World War II in 1945, a defeated Germany was divided into four occupation zones, controlled by the Allied powers: the United States, France, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. In 1949, two states emerged: the democratic Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in the West, and the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the East, with the latter being under Soviet control.
Left without a headstone amid lingering fears of retribution from Moscow, the gravesite of Igor Gouzenko and his wife Svetlana has been identified since 2002 by a large Muskoka rock bearing a plaque with their names and the phrase "We chose freedom for mankind." A small gathering at the grave this weekend marked 80 years since Gouzenko defected from the Soviet Union, smuggling 109 secret documents in his shirt out of the Ottawa embassy and delivering them to the offices of the Ottawa Journal newspaper.
Fisher, who was a pilot during the Second World War, makes what he describes as a "quite simple" suggestion to reduce the chances of launching a nuclear attack: "Put that needed code number in a little capsule and then implant that capsule right next to the heart of a volunteer." Like the rotation of military personnel who today trade off carrying the "nuclear football"-the briefcase that contains the nuclear launch codes-the person with the implanted capsule would be near the President constantly.
Huston Smith discusses the family as a vital institution during Cold War tensions and technological change, interviewing Margaret Mead and Bertram Beck for their insights.
Music has long been perceived as dangerous, with authoritarian regimes perceiving it as a political weapon; both Soviet and American authorities have tried to suppress certain genres.
In a place where information has been as tightly controlled as in the former Soviet Union, mistrust of official narratives is natural, and nothing in the record can explain why people would leave a tent undressed, in near-suicidal fashion.
My father studied the Ukrainian artists, activists and workers who defied the Soviet regime and thus faced surveillance and imprisonment. Their resilience offers relevant lessons today.
Dr. Cohenâs scholarship provided a comprehensive understanding of U.S.-Asian relations, notably his landmark work, 'America's Response to China,' which remains pivotal in the study of U.S.-Chinese interactions.
