“Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you”

Joseph Stalin’s  successor Khrushchev was quoted as saying to western diplomats in 1956, “Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you”.  This determination to beat the other side was a constant during the cold war. Both sides were confident of victory but the Soviets even more so. Marxist doctrine teaches that history is driven by a process defined as historical materialism. The progression of technologies (means of production) and labors interaction with them are the only thing that really progress history. According to Marxist thought, capitalism will inevitably continually divide society into the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. This imperialist oppression is unsustainable and will crumble leading to a new form of society. Freely chosen labor and one’s return to their species-being will then drive production in a communal economy.

Soviet Movie Poster

Anti US Soviet movie poster discussing 1983 US Invasion of Granada

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev: Time Magazine Cover March 25, 1985

Gorbachev served as an influential member of the politburo during the early 1980s before asuming the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1984. He then instituted a number of reform campaigns that ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Emma Goldman as portrayed in E.L Doctrow’s Ragtime serves as a rallying cry, a figure for those in America who advocate Anarchism, Socialism, Marxism, pretty much anything that isnt capitalism.  She fights and pushes her agenda to help the poor working man and others who have been downtrodden by the current system. She decrys how people are disregared by the system and left without housing food or means to survive. Yet her ideas are difficult to put into practice. The founders of the Soviet Union, good intentioned, as they may have been still created a system of social hierarchy despite the flowery rhetoric preaching equality and no class distinction. Without a clear model or good ideas to base such a society the creation of one on the fly is very difficult.

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan served as the 40th president of the United States of America from 1981-1989. He was the first two term republican since Eisenhower and considered a national hero by conservatives. His pro military and anti soviet policies were a trademark of his candidacy and presidency. The American consensus is that the Soviet economy was an inefficient system that collapsed because of the brilliant policy in acted by Reagan that increased military spending to a level the soviets could not match. This story has USA vs USSR good vs evil and these were the terms that Ronald Reagan used to frame the debate. They were an evil empire with expansionist goals.

Kurt Vonnegut in his Slaughterhouse Five uses his book and the character Billy Pilgrim to show that war or America’s involvement in a situation is not just a matter of good vs. evil. Situations especially on an international scale like that are extremely complex with lots of different actors with varying motives. To just gloss over these bumps and say that World War Two was good vs evil or the cold war was good vs evil is a huge error. Not just to historical accuracy but to the experience and people who lived through these events and were shaped and defined by them

Ronald Reagan speaks at Disney

“The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

The feelings and mood of the average Soviet citizen is harder to gauge because of the mostly closed society Moscow governed. The average Soviet citizen grew up and lived in a society dominated by the party and state. Free mandatory education from the state along with omnipresent propoganda indoctranated the populace with the government’s line.

There is a Bear in the Woods…

The Cold War was filled with fear, propoganda, and misconceptions. Many Soviet and American leaders as well as populations felt that the other side wanted to and was willingly to start a nuclear war. This ad was run during the 1984 election of Ronald Reagan. This is meant to instill fear and the worry that the United States of America is not as strong as the Soviet Union. Many many americans agreed with the basic sentiments put forth in this ad. This fear and willingness to paint opponents in such a negative light was commonplace during the Cold War.

Mystory Perspective

My logic as of now is to build down from the broad to the more specific. Starting with experiences shared throughout the nation or state and comparing and contrasting. Similarly try to obtain the experience of the leaders of the USA and USSR at the time. From there i will need to further refine down to the event of Reagan’s spending, the 600 ship navy, the USS Wisconsin and my grandfather Frank.

Mystory Research

Literary Sources:

Ragtime

The Life You Save May be your Own- Flannery O’ Connor

Scholarly Sources:

A Very Short Introduction: Cold War- McMahon

http://kommunalka.colgate.edu/

Cultural Refrences:

http://www.marxists.org

Life Magazine

Globalsecurity.org

Center for Defense Information

Department of Defense

EC Response to Clark’s Response Six

Clark does a very good job expanding on Slaughterhouse Five.  His opening scene with Roland Weary fighting the Germans is certainly useful to express the opposite of standard American doxa.  World War Two is generally considered to be the last righteous war, this belief is ingrained in American minds. People think we were the good guys fighting the ultimate evil. In reality war is a horrible affair with pointless violence and bloodshed on both sides. Weary here is set to impress that perhaps American soldiers in world war two were not all knights in shining armour and that perhaps brutality was not just the realm of the Nazis. This false idea about America is further shown through the scene on Trafalmadore. American families get their understanding of their country, culture, and society through television. On one hand American culture is presented in teh model of the old west. Heroes saving the defenseless and good always winning. Yet of course this is not the real America despite what message is pushed down American throats. Our society in reality is filled with the typical failings of human beings. The affect that appears to me is the attempt to show and elaborate on the false ideas and notions that swirl around World War Two and American society. America is not always the good shining knight riding into the sunset after rescuing the damsel and saving the world. That notion is irrational and should be saved for television.

Mystory Proposal

1. I will be trying to use the experience of a historical event, situation or issue.

2. The issue that i will deal with is the US policy implemented under Ronald Regan called the 600 ship navy. This plan was meant to increase the size of the US navy in order to increase strength and but strategic pressure on the Soviet Union.

The relevance to me is that one of the Iowa class battleships brought out of mothballs was the USS Wisconsin which my grandfather served on during World War Two and the Korean War. Also the Naval Base at Mayport Florida is 19 miles from my home in Fernandina Beach. The school i attended in Jacksonville is situated on the oppositie bank directly across from a large Naval Air Station as well.

3. The conventional thinking on this subject was that Regan was instrumental in ending the cold war. He was able to do this through massive spending increases especially on the miliitary that the Soviets could not match. The 600 ship navy program was one such policy. The soviets attempt to match US military spending ulitmatley pushed the communist economy over the edge and resulted in the demise of that regimne.

4. The argumentive position would be to evaluate the effectivness of the Regan policy. Researching and debating such questions as: How much did US increase spending? How much did Soviet spending increase? What were the condition of both economies at the time? What was the state of both navies at the time? When did the navy program end? What did the program really accomplish? Answering these questions would lead to a thesis supporting or decrying Regans Policy.

5. One area that i believe that is often overlooked when people make the claim that Regan’s spending on military ended the cold war was the fact that the Soviet economy was already teaternig on the edge of collapse. Possibly Regan did not contribute as much as everyone

6. CATT- method, memory, experience, perspective

7. Certinatly need to refashion Regan and Gorbachev both leaders have been warped by doxa significantly. Farmily connection would be my grandfather but that is a bit tenious.

8. One obvious trap is to not rely too heavily on established consensus thought. The idea that regan won the cold war is so ingrained that even scholarly material is heavily influnced by group think. A clearer view of the world not based on the ideologies and prejudices of the cold war is required.

Expressions

David Korman

2/13/09

UFID 9189-1951

Expressions

Part I

Elizabeth Bishop makes use of figurative expressions through much of her poetry. The Bight is one poem that uses this technique to convey meaning. She is describing how a bay or inlet looks to her on her birthday. In order to better describe and be more creative with her language and technique she uses figurative expression. The first example of this happens almost immediately in the second line. She describes, “White, crumbling ribs of marl protrude and glare”. These are just portions of dirt or calcium deposits that are rising above the water level. Yet Bishop uses figurative language to describe them as ribs and that they are glaring back at her or at the world. Towards the middle of the poem she goes on to describe the water as turning into gas and music while pelicans, “crash into this peculiar gas unnecessarily hard, it seems to me, like pickaxes. These lines are certainty figurative expression. Toward the end of the poem another large piece of figurative expression are the boats in the bight. These abandon vessels are, “like torn-open, unanswered letters”.

These various figurative expressions do more than just paint a more vivid picture for our minds about this particular inlet. They also communicate on a deeper level. These expressions will mean different things for different people and thus everyone will have a slightly different reaction when reading that boats in the harbor are torn-open, unanswered letters. So these figurative expressions are the vehicle for showing condition, or emotion without explicitly stating it. Though the vehicle is not always blatant figurative expressions in this case it is.

Tenor in a poem is more akin to an unstated mood than anything else. Bishop here is not trying to make us all feel one particular way or think one particular thing. Through her use of language and imagery she paints a picture that is different for everyone. Yet through this poem the tenor seems to be one of reflection and sadness. The combination of the natural condition and man made activities create a very unique scene in this poem. By using the vehicle of figurative expression she shows the tenor of this poem. Images such as, “crumbling ribs of marl…pilings dry as matches…birds like pickaxes…torn-open unanswered letters”. None of the figurate language she uses is very happy or upbeat. The tenor of such expressions is more of reflection, contemplation, sadness and thought about nature and humans.

Part II

The description of the opening acts of the Korean War as described in The Cold War serves as a good example of showing the reinforcement of consensus. Nowhere does the author describe the ruling regime of either country prior to the conflict. By ignoring the ante bellum situation in Korea he is in fact reinforcing the consensus. American doxa is that during the cold war we fought oppressive communism and spread enlighten, liberal, capitalist, democracy. In South Korea prior to 1950 the ruler was a dictator named Rhee who prescribed too many of the brutal Japanese methods used to control Korea. By ignoring the brutal tendencies of the South Korean regime the doxa is reinforced that America is an unequivocal force for good in the world that defends democracy and freedoms against tyranny.