The history of the Cold War has focused overwhelmingly on statecraft and military power, an approach that has naturally placed Moscow and Washington center stage. Meanwhile, regions such as Alaska, the polar landscapes, and the cold areas of the Soviet periphery have received little attention. However, such environments were of no small importance during the Cold War: in addition to their symbolic significance, they also had direct implications for everything from military strategy to natural resource management. Through histories of these extremely cold environments, this volume makes a novel intervention in Cold War historiography, one whose global and transnational approach undermines the simple opposition of “East” and “West.”

No detailed description available for "The Russian Cold".

By tracing the English word permafrost back to its Russian roots, this unique intellectual history uncovers the multiple, contested meanings of permafrost as a scientific idea and environmental phenomenon.

Using newly declassified documents, this book explores why U.S. military leaders after World War II sought to monitor the far north and understand the physical environment of Greenland, a crucial territory of Denmark. It reveals a fascinating yet little-known realm of Cold War intrigue and a delicate diplomatic duet between a smaller state and a superpower amid a time of intense global pressures. Written by scholars in Denmark and the United States, this book explores many compelling topics. What led to the creation of the U.S. Thule Air Base in Greenland, one of the world’s largest, and why did the U.S. build a nuclear-powered city under Greenland’s ice cap? How did Danish concern about sovereignty shape scientific research programs in Greenland? Also explored here: why did Denmark’s most famous scientist, Inge Lehmann, became involved in research in Greenland, and what international reverberations resulted from the crash of a U.S. B-52 bomber carrying four nuclear weapons near Thule in January 1968?

Ice humanities is a pioneering collection of essays that tackles the existential crisis posed by the planet's diminishing ice reserves. By the end of this century, we will likely be facing a world where sea ice no longer reliably forms in large areas of the Arctic Ocean, where glaciers have not just retreated but disappeared, where ice sheets collapse, and where permafrost is far from permanent. The ramifications of such change are not simply geophysical and biochemical. They are societal and cultural, and they are about value and loss. Where does this change leave our inherited ideas, knowledge and experiences of ice, snow, frost and frozen ground? How will human, animal and plant communities superbly adapted to cold and high places cope with less ice, or even none at all? The ecological services provided by ice are breath-taking, providing mobility, water and food security for hundreds of millions of people around the world, often Indigenous and vulnerable communities. The stakes could not be higher. Drawing on sources ranging from oral testimony to technical scientific expertise, this path-breaking collection sets out a highly compelling claim for the emerging field of ice humanities, convincingly demonstrating that the centrality of ice in human and non-human life is now impossible to ignore.

It is the black ice spy Reiner Paul Fülle, about whom part of his life story is told in this novel. Born in Zwickau and came to the West as a child, Fülle was recruited by the State Security as a young man while visiting his relatives in Thuringia. A spy at the MfS since 1964, he supplied information from the Karlsruhe nuclear research facility to the GDR for adventure and money. On January 19, 1979, Reiner Paul Fülle was arrested by the BKA. He escaped and was brought to the GDR in a wooden box a few days later by the Soviet military mission. Because the BKA officials slipped on black ice during the persecution, abundance was referred to in the German media as black ice spy. Not least because he was very reluctant to be spanked or prescribed, and because his wife persistently refused to move to the GDR, he made his return to the Federal Republic of Germany. Filled with false papers, Fülle returned in late 1981.