A historical account of ideology in the Global South as the postwar laboratory of socialism, its legacy following the Cold War, and the continuing influence of socialist ideas worldwide.
In the first decades after World War II, many newly independent Asian and African countries and established Latin American states pursued a socialist development model. Jeremy Friedman traces the socialist experiment over forty years through the experience of five countries: Indonesia, Chile, Tanzania, Angola, and Iran.
These states sought paths to socialism without formal adherence to the Soviet bloc or the programs that Soviets, East Germans, Cubans, Chinese, and other outsiders tried to promote. Instead, they attempted to forge new models of socialist development through their own trial and error, together with the help of existing socialist countries, demonstrating the flexibility and adaptability of socialism. All five countries would become Cold War battlegrounds and regional models, as new policies in one shaped evolving conceptions of development in another. Lessons from the collapse of democracy in Indonesia were later applied in Chile, just as the challenge of political Islam in Indonesia informed the policies of the left in Iran. Efforts to build agrarian economies in West Africa influenced Tanzania’s approach to socialism, which in turn influenced the trajectory of the Angolan model.
Ripe for Revolution shows socialism as more adaptable and pragmatic than often supposed. When we view it through the prism of a Stalinist orthodoxy, we miss its real effects and legacies, both good and bad. To understand how socialism succeeds and fails, and to grasp its evolution and potential horizons, we must do more than read manifestos. We must attend to history.
The conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War has long been understood in a global context, but Jeremy Friedman's Shadow Cold War delves deeper into the era to examine the competition between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China for the leadership of the world revolution. When a world of newly independent states emerged from decolonization desperately poor and politically disorganized, Moscow and Beijing turned their focus to attracting these new entities, setting the stage for Sino-Soviet competition.
Based on archival research from ten countries, including new materials from Russia and China, many no longer accessible to researchers, this book examines how China sought to mobilize Asia, Africa, and Latin America to seize the revolutionary mantle from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union adapted to win it back, transforming the nature of socialist revolution in the process. This groundbreaking book is the first to explore the significance of this second Cold War that China and the Soviet Union fought in the shadow of the capitalist-communist clash.
Jeremy Friedman is an assistant professor of business administration in the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit, and teaches the course of the same name in the MBA required curriculum. Previously, he was associate director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale University.
Professor Friedman studies the history of communism, socialism, and revolution in Russia, China, and the developing world. He examines how the project of socialist revolution and leftist thought more broadly evolved over the course of the twentieth century, particularly as revolutionary battlegrounds shifted from the industrialized countries to the developing world in the wake of decolonization. His work has been published in Cold War History and Modern China Studies and in media outlets including The National Interest, The Diplomat, and The Moscow Times. His first book, Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World, was published in 2015.
Professor Friedman received his PhD in history from Princeton University and subsequently held a postdoctoral fellowship in international security studies at Yale University, where he taught courses in Russian and Cold War history.
- Featured Work
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A historical account of ideology in the Global South as the postwar laboratory of socialism, its legacy following the Cold War, and the continuing influence of socialist ideas worldwide.
In the first decades after World War II, many newly independent Asian and African countries and established Latin American states pursued a socialist development model. Jeremy Friedman traces the socialist experiment over forty years through the experience of five countries: Indonesia, Chile, Tanzania, Angola, and Iran.
These states sought paths to socialism without formal adherence to the Soviet bloc or the programs that Soviets, East Germans, Cubans, Chinese, and other outsiders tried to promote. Instead, they attempted to forge new models of socialist development through their own trial and error, together with the help of existing socialist countries, demonstrating the flexibility and adaptability of socialism. All five countries would become Cold War battlegrounds and regional models, as new policies in one shaped evolving conceptions of development in another. Lessons from the collapse of democracy in Indonesia were later applied in Chile, just as the challenge of political Islam in Indonesia informed the policies of the left in Iran. Efforts to build agrarian economies in West Africa influenced Tanzania’s approach to socialism, which in turn influenced the trajectory of the Angolan model.
Ripe for Revolution shows socialism as more adaptable and pragmatic than often supposed. When we view it through the prism of a Stalinist orthodoxy, we miss its real effects and legacies, both good and bad. To understand how socialism succeeds and fails, and to grasp its evolution and potential horizons, we must do more than read manifestos. We must attend to history.
The conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War has long been understood in a global context, but Jeremy Friedman's Shadow Cold War delves deeper into the era to examine the competition between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China for the leadership of the world revolution. When a world of newly independent states emerged from decolonization desperately poor and politically disorganized, Moscow and Beijing turned their focus to attracting these new entities, setting the stage for Sino-Soviet competition.
Based on archival research from ten countries, including new materials from Russia and China, many no longer accessible to researchers, this book examines how China sought to mobilize Asia, Africa, and Latin America to seize the revolutionary mantle from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union adapted to win it back, transforming the nature of socialist revolution in the process. This groundbreaking book is the first to explore the significance of this second Cold War that China and the Soviet Union fought in the shadow of the capitalist-communist clash.
- Books
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- Journal Articles
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- Friedman, Jeremy. "The Ambiguity of Stalin." Modern Age 61, no. 1 (Winter 2019): 61–66. View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "Who is a Better Ally for the United States: China or Russia?" PostEverything: Perspective. Washington Post (April 7, 2017). View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy, and Peter Rutland. "Anti-imperialism: The Leninist Legacy and the Fate of World Revolution." Special Issue on 1917–2017, The Russian Revolution a Hundred Years Later. Slavic Review 76, no. 3 (Fall 2017): 591–599. View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "The Revolutionary Roots of Russian Foreign Policy." Current History 116, no. 792 (October 2017): 258–263. View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "The Enemy of My Enemy: The Soviet Union, East Germany, and the Iranian Tudeh Party's Support for Ayatollah Khomeini." Journal of Cold War Studies 20, no. 2 (Spring 2018): 3–37. View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "Where Is China Headed?" Orbis 60, no. 3 (Summer 2016): 453–459. View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "Soviet Policy in the Developing World and the Chinese Challenge in the 1960s." Cold War History 10, no. 2 (2010): 247–272. View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "Free at Last, Now What: The Soviet and Chinese Attempts to Offer a Roadmap for the Post-Colonial World." Modern China Studies [Dang dai Zhongguo yan jiu] 22, no. 1 (2015): 259–292. View Details
- Book Chapters
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- Friedman, Jeremy. "Reddest Place North of Havana: The Tricontinental and the Struggle to Lead the 'Third World’." Chap. 7 in The Tricontinental Revolution: Third World Radicalism and the Cold War, edited by R. Joseph Parrott and Mark Atwood Lawrence. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2022. View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "Soviet Policy in the Developing World and the Chinese Challenge in the 1960s." In Fragile Alliance: The Cold War and Sino-Soviet Relations, edited by Shen Zhihua and Douglas Stiffler. Beijing, China: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2010. View Details
- Cases and Teaching Materials
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- Friedman, Jeremy, Jingyu Liu, and Christine Riggle. "Stalin’s Capitalists: American Business and Soviet Industrialization." Harvard Business School Case 722-058, April 2022. View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "The First Opium War and Global Free Trade." Harvard Business School Case 722-052, April 2022. View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy, John Masko, and Jingyu Liu. "Copper Nationalization in Chile." Harvard Business School Case 722-016, March 2022. View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy, and Jonathan Schlefer. "Stagflation: The 1970s and the Crisis of the Postwar System." Harvard Business School Case 721-027, January 2021. (Revised November 2021.) View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "Socialism." Harvard Business School Background Note 721-030, December 2020. View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy, and Sophus A. Reinert. "Angola Starts Now." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 719-058, February 2019. View Details
- Cavallo, Alberto, Kristin Fabbe, Mattias Fibiger, Jeremy Friedman, Reshmaan Hussam, Vincent Pons, and Matthew Weinzierl. "The BGIE Twenty (2022 version)." Harvard Business School Technical Note 718-032, December 2017. (Revised January 2022.) View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy, and Sophus A. Reinert. "Angola Starts Now." Harvard Business School Case 719-007, January 2019. (Revised December 2020.) View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "The Last Hegemon? US-China Relations and the Future of World Order." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 719-015, January 2019. View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "Iran on the Brink: The Nuclear Deal and the Future of the Islamic Republic." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 719-016, January 2019. View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "Hegemony." Harvard Business School Technical Note 719-014, October 2018. View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "Empire vs. Nation-State." Harvard Business School Technical Note 719-013, October 2018. View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "The Last Hegemon? US-China Relations and the Future of World Order." Harvard Business School Case 718-059, March 2018. (Revised April 2021.) View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "Iran on the Brink: The Nuclear Deal and the Future of the Islamic Republic." Harvard Business School Case 717-038, March 2017. (Revised November 2017.) View Details
- Presentations
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- Friedman, Jeremy. "Constructing Socialism in the Third World: The Case of Tanzania." Yale University, New Haven, CT, November 29, 2016. View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World." National History Center, Washington, DC, December 5, 2016. View Details
- Other Publications and Materials
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- Friedman, Jeremy, and Ingrid Burke Friedman. "Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Is the Result of Its Own Failure to ‘Denazify’." Jurist (April 5, 2022). View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "How the United States Can Use Trade Policy to Prevent a New Sino-Russian Alliance." Jurist (March 18, 2022). View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy, and Ingrid Burke Friedman. "Putin's Invasion of Ukraine: A Desperate Gamble to Reverse a String of Failures." Jurist (March 2, 2022). View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "Who is a Better Ally for the United States: China or Russia?" PostEverything: Perspective. Washington Post (April 7, 2017). View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "The Nuclear Deal Could Transform Iran's Revolution." National Interest (May 6, 2015). View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "The West Should Not Boycott Russia's Victory Day." The Diplomat (May 5, 2015). View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy. "Is the West's Problem with Putin, or Russia?" Moscow Times (November 14, 2014). View Details
- Friedman, Jeremy, and Sergey Radchencko. "Parade Observer: In Competing with United States to Be the Regional Spokesman, China Has Not Forgotten Anti-imperialist and Anti-hegemonic Slogans." Pengpai [The Paper] (September 2, 2015). View Details
- Research Summary
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Professor Friedman devotes his research to the history of the Left and its struggle to end economic and social inequality. He studies how this struggle evolved, its various cultural contexts, and what paths have been tried and rejected. He has been able to gain access to archival resources, some no longer available to researchers, and to study them in their original languages.
In his first book, Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World, Professor Friedman examines the different approaches taken by the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China in their quest for influence in newly decolonized Third World states after World War II. He is currently investigating how socialism played itself out in the political trajectories of five of these countries—Indonesia, Tanzania, Chile, Angola, and Iran—from the late 1940s to the 1980s. He explores the process by which actors in these countries, as well as in the Soviet Union and China, attempted to create a workable model of socialism for the developing world. In this environment, no one knew what “Third World Socialism” should look like, so the lessons of each attempt to build it were studied and absorbed into the next one.
- Additional Information
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