The Cambridge History of Communism

The various strands that contribute to the history of postwar anti-communism are rarely joined together in a single study. Many of them can be explored in various essays in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, edited by Leffler, Melvyn P. and Westad, Odd Arne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), and in Immerman, Richard H. and Goedde, Petra (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). See also Selverstone, Marc J., Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain, and International Communism, 1945–1950 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).

The literature on anti-communism in the global South is vast and diversified. For broad overviews, see Westad, Odd Arne, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2005), and McMahon, Robert J. (ed.), The Cold War in the Third World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

On Western strategic analyses of the Soviet Union and communism, and the ensuing policy of containment, see Leffler, Melvyn P., For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War (New York: Hill & Wang, 2007); Stephanson, Anders, “The Cold War Considered as a US Project,” in Pons, Silvio and Romero, Federico (eds.), Reinterpreting the End of the Cold War: Issues, Interpretations, Periodizations (London: Frank Cass, 2005), 52–67; Gaddis, John Lewis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).

The most comprehensive historical investigations of the meanings, permutations and usage of the concept of totalitarianism are Traverso, Enzo, Le totalitarisme. Le XXe siècle en débat (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2001), and Gleason, Abbott, Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

The “cultural Cold War” waged for the consolidation of an anti-communist Western identity has been explored in many recent studies. Among the most illuminating are Berghahn, Volker R., America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe: Shepard Stone Between Philanthropy, Academy, and Diplomacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Major, Patrick and Mitter, Rana (eds.), Across the Blocs: Exploring Comparative Cold War Cultural and Social History (London: Frank Cass, 2004); Mariano, Marco (ed.), Defining the Atlantic Community: Culture, Intellectuals, and Policies in the Mid-Twentieth Century (New York: Routledge, 2010); Scott-Smith, Giles and Krabbendam, Hans (eds.), Cultural Cold War in Western Europe, 1945–1960 (London: Frank Cass, 2004); Scott-Smith, Giles, The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA and Post-War American Hegemony (New York: Routledge, 2002).

On anti-communism in the United States, see Ceplair, Larry, Anti-Communism in Twentieth-Century America: A Critical History (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011); Schrecker, Ellen, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston: Little Brown, 1998); Fried, Richard M., Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); Friedman, Andrea, Citizenship in Cold War America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014); Field, Douglas (ed.), American Cold War Culture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005).

On the politics and culture of postwar Europe, see Judt, Tony, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Press, 2005); Stone, Dan, Goodbye to All That? A History of Europe Since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Müller, Jan-Werner, Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth-Century Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011); Gilbert, Mark, Cold War Europe: The Politics of a Contested Continent (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014); Stone, Dan (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Major, Patrick, The Death of the KPD: Communism and Anti-Communism in West Germany, 1945–1956 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997); Schissler, Hanna (ed.), The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949–1968 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Jarausch, Konrad Hugo, After Hitler: Recivilizing Germans, 1945–1995 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Del Pero, Mario, L’alleato scomodo. Gli USA e la DC negli anni del Centrismo (1948–1955) (Rome: Carocci, 2001); Mariuzzo, Andrea, Divergenze parallele. Comunismo e anticomunismo alle origini del linguaggio politico dell’Italia repubblicana (1945–1955) (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2010); Buton, Philippe, Buttner, Olivier and Hastings, Michel (eds.), La Guerre froide vue d’en bas (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2014).