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Rethinking Cold War History
David McKnight*
Historians have rethought some of the prevailing assumptions employed in writing about the Cold War in Australia. Until recently, the history of the Cold War in Australia was often written with too little detachment and skepticism toward the Left, and with a failure of scholarly empathy toward the claims of the anti-Communist Right. The opening of new archival and intelligence sources (such as the 'Venona' papers) is one reason for the shift in the field. Another is a reassessment of the link between the USSR and the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), that leads to questions about the CPA's dogmatic pro-Soviet stance, and to what degree this was partly responsible for its defeats, rather than simply victimisation. New archival sources establish that some clandestine political activity was undertaken, including espionage and that Soviet funds were given to the CPA over a long period. Not every historian, however, has embraced this new evidence. The present article critiques recent contributions by Cain and Hocking, suggesting that discussion of political fundamentalism on the Left and the security response to it is vital if Cold War history is to be understood and made relevant to discussions of contemporary terrorism.
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| The field of Cold War history in Australia has undergone a major shift in interpretation. This has led to less partisan accounts of several events which had previously been the site of significant differences between historians of the Left and Right. This shift confirms Deery's earlier view of the susceptibility of the field to shifting interpretations and his argument that 'the history of communism and anti-communism [in Australia] is being rewritten'.1 Deery also predicted that some controversies from this period would continue for many years. This article discusses one such area whereby the link between the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) and the Soviet Union is subject to differing interpretation. These continuing differences now mainly occur among historians sympathetic to the Left and the labour movement, rather than the older binary between this group and those more sympathetic to the anti-Communist cause. |
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In part, this shift is a consequence of the opening of new archival sources following the collapse of the Soviet Union and its East European satellites. This initially meant the opening of the Communist International records at the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) which in turn prompted the opening of the archives of the US National Security Agency including the results of the US-UK decoding operation of Soviet foreign activities (the 'Venona' files).2 Combined with the increasingly liberal release policy of security archives by the National Archives of Australia (NAA), these resources have created the basis for a rethinking of the interpretative frameworks of Cold War history. Among the notable works indicating this interpretative shift are those by Lowe, Ball and Horner, along with other contributions from Deery and McKnight.3 |
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This shift began in the early 1980s when historians gained access to security archives under the new Archives Act 1983. The first substantial study was Manne's detailed 1987 account of the Petrov Royal Commission.4 Manne concluded that the Petrovs as well as intelligence officers were truthful witnesses; that Vladimir Petrov's defection had not been deliberately timed by the Menzies government for electoral benefit and that the Royal Commission was right in naming a leading CPA member, Walter Clayton, as a conduit for documents from the Department of External Affairs to Soviet intelligence. Manne's account was assessed in terms of the partisanship which saturated the writing of Cold War history in 1987. One of the reviews of his revisionist account described it as 'a quality hatchet job' which was 'seriously flawed'.5 The reviewer charged that Manne had trusted sources which he should not have, including the newly released archives of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO). There was 'abundant historical evidence that shows security services to be great deceivers'. In arguing this, the reviewer expressed a strong belief in an overarching interpretive truth which could not be contradicted by mere empirical evidence. |
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