Governmental Declassification and the Revision of Recent American History: The Case of the McCarthy Era.

The McCarthy Era is one of the best-known periods of recent American history. Decades have passed but the memory of what happened is still vivid and the famous question "are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" still resonates. Few areas of American history have been covered a...

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Publicado en:International Journal of the Humanities Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 97 - 108
Autor principal: Kouki, Samia
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Common Ground Research Networks 2011
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        Venona project (Espionage)
        Communist parties
        Cold War, 1945-1991
        Historical revisionism
        National security
        Civil rights
        United States history
        McCarthyism
        United States
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          United States
          Venona project (Espionage)
          Communist parties
          Cold War, 1945-1991
          Historical revisionism
          National security
          Civil rights
          United States history
          McCarthyism
      keyword:
        "Venona Project"
        Civil Liberties
        Espionage
        Historical Revisionism
        McCarthy Era
        National Security
      ab: The McCarthy Era is one of the best-known periods of recent American history. Decades have passed but the memory of what happened is still vivid and the famous question "are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" still resonates. Few areas of American history have been covered as closely as the domestic Cold War. If one considers McCarthyism as a subject of research there is therefore no telling that the important number of books, scholarly articles, and student theses that have already been written about the subject, have said almost everything about America's fear of communists and its reaction to this fear during the 1940's and 1950's. One is therefore tempted to wonder: what is left to study? What makes further discussion possible? What ought to be mentioned in this context is that more material was indeed added to allow more discussion. The declassification of a top secret document in the mid 1990's, what was called the "Venona Project", opened new possibilities for a new perspective of researching McCarthyism. This new perspective is a revisionist one. Building on this new source of primary documentation, this paper attempts to reconsider the conventional wisdom regarding the infamous witch-hunt episode, and to outline certain limits for reconsideration. Accordingly, the questions addressed in this research are the following: To what extent does this newly available documentation challenge the general understanding of 1940's-50's America? Does the existence of such documents radically change the common interpretation of American domestic anticommunism? What aspects of this infamous episode are to be revised, and can this revision sanction the excesses and the extreme measures undertaken in the "McCarthy Era"?
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