Journal Article

Social Movements, Internationalism and the Cold War: Perspectives on Labour History

Diane Kirkby, Sean Scalmer

2016

Overview

Historians started talking of the Cold War in the late 1940s.1 English writer George Orwell is generally credited with coining the term in October 1945, though American journalist Walter Lippman's 1947 book, The Cold War was more important in propagating the concept. The term became widely deployed to describe the increasingly open struggle between the USA and its allies in the West and the USSR and its allies in the Eastern Bloc.3 In its heightened military mobilisation, violent propaganda, intense global competition, and battles by proxy, this conflict was a war; in the narrow avoidance of hostilities directly pitting the superpowers against one another, the temperature remained below the heat of an all-out armed conflict. The concept of the \"Cold War\" captures this unstable combination.

• Publisher: Australian Society for the Study of Labour History,Australian Society for Labour History, Institute Bldg
• Subject: Armed Forces / Association for International Co-operation and Disarmament / Cold War / Cold War (1945-1989) / Cold wars / Communism / Communist parties / Conflict / Globalization / Historians / History instruction / Internationalism / Labor history / Labor movements / Labor unions / LABOUR INTERNATIONALISM, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND THE COLD WAR / Military mobilization / Mobilization / Orwell, George (Eric Blair) (1903-1950) / Peace movements / Peacetime / Propaganda / Social movements / Superpowers / Talking