Cold War

1950-today: Corporate and state intervention in the arts

In favour - abstract impressionism

A look at involvement of governments and corporations attempting to push their interests in the world of art and culture since the middle of the last century.

The Cultural Cold War

1966: The Blake prison escape

George Blake

A short history of the miraculous prison break of Soviet double-agent George Blake from a British jail, organised by two libertarian activists.

In 1966, the most notorious prisoner in Britain was sprung from jail. George Blake was a British double-agent serving 42 years for spying for the Soviet Union. At the time this was the longest jail sentence ever imposed by a British court.

1940-1989: The Cold War

Noam Chomsky explains the nature of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union before its collapse in 1989.


How the Cold War worked

1945-1957: Vietnam

Japanese Commander surrenders at Saigon, Vietnam, September 1945

Howard Zinn's short history of Vietnam from the defeat of Japan in 1945 through the installation of the US puppet government in Saigon to the beginning of the Vietnam War.

1957-1975: The Vietnam War

Howard Zinn's short history of the war in Vietnam from the beginning of the Communist insurgency in 1957 until the defeat of US and South Vietnamese forces in 1975.

Following the partitioning of Vietnam into the pro-independence Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the North, and the US puppet state the Republic of Vietnam in the South in 1954 (see our short history of Vietnam from 1945 to 1957) elections were due to be held on re-unification.

16. A People's War?

"We, the governments of Great Britain and the United States, in the name of India, Burma, Malaya, Australia, British East Africa, British Guiana, Hong Kong, Siam, Singapore, Egypt, Palestine, Canada, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, as well as Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, Hawaii, Alaska, and the Virgin Islands, hereby declare most emphatically, that this is
Syndicate content