Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: For nearly 35 years, I worked very closely with the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) and History and Public Policy Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWICS). The WWICS was created by the U.S. Congress in 1968 as an autonomous part of the Smithsonian Institution. The center quickly gained a stellar reputation as a nonpartisan body of expertise on international affairs—a reputation it maintained throughout its 57-year existence. The WWICS was notable for the high quality of the books, reports, and other items it published and the many illuminating events it sponsored. The center had many components dealing with all parts of the world, but my connections were with the CWIHP and the History and Public Policy Program. Those two entities, focusing on the history of the 20th century, were renowned throughout the world for their contributions to academic work and public policy discussions.The CWIHP was founded under the WWICS in late 1991 and early 1992 to take advantage of the new research opportunities afforded by the demise of Communism in East-Central Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Crucial archives in those countries that had been off-limits during the Cold War were made accessible to researchers after the Cold War ended. The CWIHP provided travel grants and took other steps to facilitate the efforts of U.S. (and other) scholars to undertake archival research in former Soviet-bloc countries. The CWIHP served as a clearinghouse for newly available Cold War documents from archives in Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, East Asia, South Asia, Africa, and Latin America.I was closely involved with and strongly supportive of the CWIHP from the start, and I frequently took part in CWIHP conferences and seminars and contributed many articles and documentary analyses to the CWIHP's periodic Bulletin of the Cold War International History Project (the flagship publication of the project throughout the 1990s) and to the CWIHP website. I also published numerous CWIHP Working Papers, which, like the Bulletin, were distributed around the world.When Harvard University's Cold War Studies program was set up in 1997, it was carefully designed to complement rather than duplicate the functions of the CWIHP. The two entities forged a highly cooperative relationship. Essentially, the aim of the Harvard program was to address a “problem” resulting from the success of the CWIHP. By the mid-1990s, the quantity of documentation that emerged from the former Communist bloc and from Western countries had become so immense that it overwhelmed even the best of attempts to cope with it. Because the amount of newly available archival material continued to expand rapidly, one of the basic tasks for the academic community was to ensure that scholars were taking full advantage of the sudden outpouring of riches. The Harvard program was set up to help remedy this “problem” (a good problem to have) by adding a new scholarly dimension to the CWIHP's invaluable work. The idea was to make use of the resources at Harvard to put out top-notch scholarly publications, above all the Journal of Cold War Studies (JCWS), published by MIT Press starting in 1999, and the Harvard Cold War Studies book series, published by Bloomsbury Academic.The complementarity of the two programs worked out extremely well for both. The major purpose of the CWIHP Bulletin (and of CWIHP Working Papers) and the CWIHP's online offshoots was to publish translations of newly released East-bloc documents as well as commentaries on those documents. The JCWS does not feature translations of documents, leaving that task to the CWIHP. Instead, the JCWS is a peer-reviewed outlet for scholarly analyses that draw on archival research. The publication of these analyses is intended to promote a better understanding of all aspects of the Cold War, to encourage the use of reliable evidence for tests of theoretical propositions in the social sciences, and to generate lessons for U.S. policymakers.The CWIHP also had other partners, above all the National Security Archive, a private non-governmental organization set up in the mid-1980s. When the National Security Archive was created, its purpose was to promote declassification of U.S. documents and amass copies of them for scholars to use. That function has remained central to the National Security Archive ever since, but in the latter half of the 1990s the organization also began to help the CWIHP in gathering and translating former Soviet documents. The two organizations worked together on many projects and events, and both of them made vast quantities of declassified documents available online as PDF files for scholars to download. These collections were invaluable for scholars who wanted to contribute articles and books published by Harvard's Cold War Studies program.The CWIHP was remarkably successful during its three-and-a-half decades of existence, but unfortunately on 14 March 2025 the whole Woodrow Wilson Center was targeted for closure in an executive order issued by President Donald J. Trump. No explanation was offered for the decision to close the WWICS, either at the time or afterward. One would assume that any attempt to disband the Wilson Center would require an act of Congress, which had set up the organization in the first place. Strangely, neither house of Congress made any effort to salvage the WWICS, and, as a result, the closure of the Center was launched in March 2025 and is projected to be completed by the summer of 2025. This outstanding body of expertise on international affairs will thus cease to exist—an outcome I find baffling and detrimental to U.S. national interests.The success of the CWIHP was attributable in no small part to the energy, intellect, and dedication of the three individuals who served, successively, as director of the project during its existence: James G. Hershberg, the founding director who set everything into gear; David Wolff, who served relatively briefly but began the transition into the digital age; and Christian Ostermann, who served for a quarter century until 2025, running the CWIHP with admirable professionalism. They deserve wholehearted thanks and congratulations for the invaluable accomplishments of the organization they ran. Much the same is true of the many excellent younger scholars, fellows, and interns who worked for the CWIHP over three decades and made superb contributions to scholarly discussions in the Washington, DC, area and the larger academic community around the world. I deeply regret that the CWIHP and the History and Public Policy Program have come to such an abrupt, inexplicable end. It is a grave loss for all those who value insightful, nonpartisan consideration of global history.
Source: Journal of Cold War Studies
DOI: 10.1162/jcws_e_01276
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4411813992