Strange Days: Cold War Britain

STRANGE DAYS offers a useful résumé of the Cold War years beginning with Churchill's speech in Fulton, Missouri in 1947 and concluding with the fall of the Berlin Wall forty-two years later. Other incidents covered in this program include the Hungarian Uprising, the Cuba Missile Crisis, and Mrs. Thatcher's visit to Moscow in the early Eighties.

Sandbrook is an affable guide as he revisits many of the famous locations: the college in Fulton, the Kremlin, and Westminster Hall, where Ronald Reagan gave his famous speech consigning communism to "the ash-heap of history." Viewers can almost sense the dead hand of history hanging over these venues.

On the other hand, his commentary tends to be rather over-simplistic, even bombastic in tone. Churchill is described as a "world citizen" committed to defending the cause of freedom against the "evils" of communism. The Kremlin "mercilessly throttled" the Hungarian rebels, while the British simply wanted to take back what was theirs during the Suez. The fact they might have "mercilessly throttled" Nasser's troops is conveniently overlooked. Macmillan is described as the "Greek" to JFK's "Roman" - suggesting, perhaps, that the Greeks were somewhat less powerful than the Romans. Reagan's speech is described as epoch-making as it defends the cause of freedom against the "evil empire" of communism; likewise Mrs. Thatcher is characterized as "a crusader against communism" (since when did the Cold War have a religious dimension)? Perhaps more interestingly, this program has been overtaken by the course of contemporary history. Sandbrook argues that communism collapsed because it could not provide people with the freedom and economic prosperity characteristic of the "free" west. What would he make of contemporary Russia, which has attained a certain degree of economic prosperity since the late Eighties, and now seeks to assert itself once again in opposition to the west - notably in Ukraine? Can this conflict still be characterized in terms of over-simplistic binary oppositions (freedom vs. totalitarianism, poverty vs. prosperity), or do historians need to view it differently?

"Strange Days: Cold War Britain" in only three episodes changes cold war perspective. In modern days that perspective is mainly from the US corner, but here we have unique opportunity to see the British viewpoint on some major events of that conflict. In the light of the modern events with Russia question arises, is Cold War really over and who (if anybody) has won? "Strange Days" won't answer those questions and it has some shortcomings, primarily on lacking objectivity and demonizing communism and Russia, but it's most comprehensive take on British Cold War to date and because of that - recommended to everyone interested in the subject.