Simon Heffer
Culture Clash
The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy During the Cold War
By David Caute
Oxford University Press 788pp £30
AT THE TIME of the Cold War there may have been two superpowers, equally capable of obliterating each other with nuclear weapons, but in some thmgs they were very unequal: notably culture. In the century before the Iron Curtain came down America had managed to produce no one of the calibre of Dostoevski, Chekhov, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Stravinsky or Diaghilev. Yet, as David Caute illustrates in the hefty first volume of his two-part study of how the cultural cold war was fought, the Russians faded abysmally to dominate with ths superior inheritance of firepower. America may have had the vulgarities of cheap fiction, Hollywood and 'negroid' jazz, but it also had one other precious cultural commodity: freedom. In contrast to conditions in the Soviet bloc, there were few restraints on creativity or cultural expression. As such, the lirmts placed on culture in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in that empire made a distinct contribution to the eventual collapse of the system.
The Americans, of course, had their Nureyev and Fonteyn: own absurdities. McCarthyism remains the prime among them, driving out as it did talented people whose only fault was to have occasionally naive political views, and who otherwise were almost entirely harmless. In some cinematic representations of recent history, America was
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm