Cultural Cold Wars and UNESCO in the Twentieth Century

Cultural Cold Wars and UNESCO in the Twentieth Century addresses the now-considerable interest in the concept of cultural cold war as a means of advancing ideologies.

The book charts the development of the concept in the twentieth century. Structured in two parts, Part I considers the League of Nations’ idealist attempts at international intellectual cooperation. It discusses also the first cultural cold war with the Communist International’s attempts to advance communism. It also analyses the ideological and cultural appeal of Italian fascism, German national socialism, and Japanese nationalist militarism; and the transition from a wartime alliance to a new cold war. Part II examines the renewal of international intellectual co-operation through the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in the context of a second cultural cold war between the capitalist democracies and the communist bloc. The book shows that UNESCO became a site of this ideological competition and an example of its tensions.

Based on original research and a comprehensive review of the literature, including in Russian, German, and French, the book will appeal to academics, postgraduate researchers, advanced undergraduates, and others interested in recent international history and the comparative politics of ideas.

W. John Morgan is Professor Emeritus at the School of Education, University of Nottingham, where he was UNESCO Chair of the Political Economy of Education. He is also an Honorary Professor at the University of Jordan and until recently was Honorary Professor and Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow, Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data, Cardiff University, Wales, United Kingdom. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, of the Learned Society of Wales, and of the Royal Historical Society, he has also been a Commonwealth Scholarship Commissioner for the United Kingdom and Chairman of the United Kingdom National Commission for UNESCO. His previously published works with Routledge include Civil Society, Social Change, and a New Popular Education in Russia (with I.N. Trofimova and G.A. Kliucharev), Philosophy, Dialogue, and Education: Nine modern European philosophers (with A. Guilherme), Buber and Education: Dialogue as conflict resolution (with A. Guilherme), Chinese Higher Education Reform and Social Justice (edited, with B. Wu), and Higher Education Reform in China: Beyond the expansion (edited, with B. Wu).