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In my economic history class, I had my students watch two videos about Soviet economic power. One was a 1962 Encyclopedia Britannica-produced film narrated by Alfred Rieber, the other was a 2010 LSE lecture by Niall Ferguson. Students' responses were really interesting. 1/9 https://twitter.com/LarryGlickman/status/1273617532755283970
Rieber took "the Soviet challenge" seriously, pointing out how rapidly they had industrialized, how successful their literacy programs were, and also how enormous the hurdles they had already overcome had been. Ferguson started off a bit more circumspect but quickly became 2/9
sarcastic and jocular in his assessment of the Soviet economy, going on at length about the inferiority of Warsaw Pact blue jeans. (A legitimate and widely shared opinion, and I should note that Ferguson focused mostly on the 1970s and 1980s Soviet economy, which was far 3/9
less impressive, or at least less capable of provoking optimism about future performance, than in the 1960s. Still, he was sneeringly dismissive, which made a nice contrast with Rieber's sober analysis.)
My students found Ferguson flippant and therefore less credible 4/9
My students found Ferguson flippant and therefore less credible 4/9
(which is a great reminder that you should trust your students) but were blown away by the Rieber video. They had never thought of the USSR as more than a military threat, and that just because of their nuclear capacity. The idea of the Soviet Union as an *economic* rival 5/9
had never occurred to them; the possibility that previous generations of Americans were scared of being "outcompeted" rather than just blown up was a completely alien concept. That, I think, is one of the big elements missing from our memory of the USSR, and as Larry says, 6/9
that loss of memory is not limited to people born after 1989. Many people remember the USSR as powerful (and therefore frightening) solely because of its nukes, and so its power is retroactively scaled back to something like a vodka-infused North Korea. The Cold War itself 7/9
loses so many dimensions as a narrow story of nuclear standoff, which is (unfortunately) how I think it is broadly taught and remembered by many Americans, even many who lived during part of it. Reminding students that it was a conflict of rival economic systems may seem 8/9
redundant to most historians, but it's also important to emphasize that "rival economic systems" is a more complex story than "opposite ideologies," which is generally how the CW has been framed for them.
Any way, Larry's right. The CW is more a memory hole than a specter. 9/9
Any way, Larry's right. The CW is more a memory hole than a specter. 9/9
Oh yeah, in case you're interested, here are the two videos:
and
and
