Studená válka v polovině
Halfway through the Cold War

The “Half a Century of Communist Cadre Training” project

Summary/Abstract: The article is devoted to a US conference and oral history project organized by the University of South Carolina in Columbia in 1969 under the title “Half a Century of Communist Cadre Training”. Its aim was to obtain testimonies of former graduates of different types of education centers of Communist parties and to use the information for a better understanding of the transnational phenomenon of Communist “cadre” training and its importance for the dissemination of the Communist ideology. The authoress introduces individuals involved in or associated with the project – academic experts and ex-Communists/contemporary witnesses – their public actions and literary works. She uses several selected example to attempt to show how the formation of the Communist activists and their subsequent missions were affecting the evolution and development of Communist movements in their respective countries. She thematizes the project’s position in the context of the development of the US Soviet studies and its role from the viewpoint of period socio-political reflections of the Cold War, including predictions of its future development. The article is primarily based on collections of the Hoover Institution Archives in Stanford, California, the core of which consists of unpublished academicand contemporary witnesses’ essays produced under the aegis of the project.

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