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Abstract
This article considers how Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials understood, perceived, and experienced enemy female tewu (special agent) activities and “honey traps” during the early People’s Republic of China. Drawing upon internally circulated party reports and newsletters, speeches of officials, newspapers, films, literature, and dramas, it finds that officials saw enemy female tewu as real threats that had tangible impact on both civilians and men affiliated with the party through honey traps and gendered manipulations. It further argues that narratives of female tewu in official instructions, newspaper reports, and popular cultural works played a larger role in the CCP’s broader efforts to combat and resist enemy espionage than previously understood. This article contextualises existing arguments about CCP counterespionage propaganda. It counterbalances perspectives that suggest the utilisation of these narratives was largely based on irrational wartime sentiments, with the primary aim of increasing the party’s societal control.
Abstract
The first major theatre of operations during the Second World War in which South African forces fought was East Africa. Key to the South African role in the campaign was the formation of the 1st sa Infantry Division in 1940. A range of medical units were under command. Using a ‘bottom-up’ view, this article – using a range of personal accounts, which complement richly veined material at the Department of Defence Archives in Pretoria – examines the service they rendered against the backdrop of the policy framework and theatre challenges. It reveals the connection medical personnel experienced between the motives that animated other South African men and women to volunteer for wartime service – travel, adventure, patriotism – and their professional ambitions regarding the growth of medical science in the fluid and varied conditions of a modern war. Sometimes the learning curve was steep; progress depended on good leadership and innovation of practice under often-extreme circumstances. But, as this article contends, they adapted to local conditions, trained on the job, and gained experience and battle-hardiness as the campaign progressed. Steady improvement and the growing size and sophistication of the Allied medical deployment led to remarkably few admissions – and fewer fatalities – from preventable illnesses and diseases as well as improving practice in the treatment and evacuation of patients from vast operational areas characterised by exterior lines and rapidly lengthening supply lines.
Abstract
The US Red Scare of the 1950s muted opposition to nuclear weapons. But in 1957, fears of nuclear fallout reignited anti-nuclear opinion. Amid this revival, Pugwash linked anti-nuclear scientists with government policymakers, allowing Pugwash to bring scientific expertise to bear on the problem of nuclear tests. But although the Red Scare had ended, anti-communist politicians continued to use Red Scare tactics to smear scientists as communists and thwart arms control. Senator Thomas Dodd denounced Pugwash conferences as “communist conclaves” and US Pugwash scientists as dupes of the Soviets. Dodd’s report had little immediate effect; as the Kennedy administration entered office, Pugwash played an active role in bringing about the 1963 Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. But Pugwash quickly fell from favor when Lyndon Johnson became president. Johnson notoriously feared domestic anti-communism and quickly cut off government connections with scientists; Pugwash subsequently struggled to influence US policy. Having marginalized US Pugwash, government officials even encouraged their British counterparts to do the same. Hostility from western governments weakened Pugwash when its existence was already tenuous. The US government’s effort to distance itself from Pugwash was never about actual communist influence, but reflected a desire to silence opponents of the arms race.
Abstract
This chapter summarizes three features of this collection: 1) the impressive use of diverse archives in many countries, making the volume a genuinely international history; 2) the identification and portrayal of fascinating personalities, key figures in the leadership of Pugwash and the national groups; and 3) investigation into the domestic and alliance politics of Pugwash and, in particular, how governments treated scientists who were variously – depending on the country and vantage point – perceived as too close to Soviet policy preferences or acting too independently and at odds with their government’s or alliance’s positions. The chapter then compares Pugwash to contemporaneous organizations that espoused similar goals of trying to bridge the Cold War’s East–West divide. It concludes with a discussion of the merits of various theoretical approaches to understanding Pugwash, including the literature on epistemic communities and transnational advocacy networks.
Abstract
This chapter explores Pugwash in East and West Germany between 1957 and 1964, and the changing character of German-German relations within the organization. The Pugwash leadership encouraged the participation of both Germanies hoping to create a forum in which to confront and ameliorate this deepest of Cold War divides. Founded in 1959, the West German Pugwash group was highly active at conferences, although the country’s leading scientific institution, the Max Planck Society, distanced itself from the PCSWA. Meanwhile, the effects of Bonn’s Hallstein Doctrine severely limited the participation of East German scientists. This changed in 1963 when, triggered in part by the Berlin crisis, and through the efforts of European Pugwashites, steps were taken to enable stronger East German engagement with Pugwash. Important in this shift was the European Pugwash Group, then seeking to put European security – including the “German problem” – onto the Pugwash agenda. The strengthening participation of both Germanies was part of a wider ‘European turn’ within Pugwash strikingly evident at the conferences in Dubrovnik and Karlovy Vary in 1963 and 1964 respectively. This growing East and West European influence created difficulties for Pugwash, internally and externally.
Abstract
The aim of this contribution is to shed new light on the role of the PCSWA in Central and Eastern Europe during the early Cold War. Within this region, the analysis focuses on Czechoslovakia. The chapter analyzes the establishment of the PCSWA in Central and Eastern Europe as an integral part of the Soviet peace agenda, situating Pugwash in relation to the World Peace Council and the World Federation of Scientific Workers. This was a period of “restricted internationalism,” a transitory phase between the Stalinist Sovietization of scientific communities in Eastern Europe and the multilateral cooperation of Eastern Bloc countries in large scale programs under the aegis of the UN or UNESCO. After the creation of national Pugwash committees in Eastern Europe there followed a period in which the Czechoslovak Pugwash Committee was highly active, including in moves to address various political and geopolitical problems of Central and Eastern Europe. These activities had an impact on the functioning of the highly influential WFSW, for example, the analysis reveals how Pugwash activities inspired the Federation to redefine its own agenda and to probe possible joint actions.
Abstract
Mao-era Chinese foreign policymakers were never fully sold on the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. Theoretical physicist Zhou Peiyuan had their blessing to attend four conferences between 1957 and 1960, but for the following twenty-five years policymakers in Beijing articulated official positions on Pugwash ranging from ambivalence to outright hostility. Nevertheless, Pugwash networks proved remarkably durable across those two-and-a-half decades. This chapter explores the role and nature of transnational scientific networks as channels of informal cross-bloc communication during this period in which Chinese scientists had no formal involvement in the PCSWA. In particular, it highlights the singular significance of two scientists, Zhou Peiyuan and Briton Dorothy Hodgkin, whose networks, international activities, and political connections placed them at the centre of efforts within Pugwash to pursue dialogue with China and in the process that eventually brought about the PRC’s formal re-engagement with the Pugwash Conferences in 1985.
Abstract
The CPSU’s propagandistic effort for complete disarmament and towards a comprehensive ban of nuclear weapons matched the moral values of the Pugwash initiative well. Soon after the Russell-Einstein Manifesto was published, the Party decided that some Soviet scientists should participate in the networks evolving around the Manifesto. Later, Soviet Pugwash activity was institutionalized in a formal group under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences. Usually, the Presidium of the Academy issued directives before the Pugwash conferences, instructing the Soviet participants to push the party line and demonstrate full support of Khrushchev’s official foreign policy doctrine. Nonetheless, Pugwash was more than just another stage for Soviet propaganda. It provided scientists with the chance to meet foreign peers and allowed them to establish contacts across the Iron Curtain. This chapter examines the work of Soviet Pugwash participants and their perception as both activists in a transnational initiative for nuclear disarmament and ambassadors of Soviet foreign policy in the second half of the 1950s. Drawing on documents of the Soviet Pugwash group and on personal papers of its members, this chapter shows how overlapping loyalties to both the Soviet government and the Pugwash network demanded great flexibility on the part of the academicians involved.
Abstract
Cyrus Eaton was called the “last tycoon” of the twentieth century. His financial support was vital to the initial development of the Pugwash Conferences. But in 1960, leading American Pugwashites moved to distance themselves publicly from Eaton’s political and philanthropic activities, which earned him the Lenin Peace Prize. More than a simple reflection of McCarthyism, the dispute between Eaton and the American Pugwash group was rooted in strategic differences – in styles of communication and political engagement. The avowed “capitalist” put a lot of effort into showcasing his friendship with Khrushchev and advocated dialogue with the USSR. By contrast, the scientists wanted to establish a discreet channel for second track diplomacy as part of their efforts to transcend the political and ideological differences that underpinned the superpower rivalry and were driving the nuclear arms race. Analyzing the conflict between Eaton, the leading American Pugwashites and the Continuing Committee in London, this paper reconstructs how the PCSWA developed their self-understanding as a science based “communication channel” across the blocs.