Hannah Proctor – The Revenge of Heaven: U.S. Social Science, the Cultural Revolution, and Cold War Case History (23rd October)

During the Cold War, many large-scale research projects were funded by US academic and state institutions in an attempt to better understand the ‘Communist mind’, often relying on in-person interviews with emigres from the Soviet Union, Korea and China. I’m interested in a specific genre of publication that emerged from these studies: the Cold War case history (detailed case histories focused on politicized individuals deemed exemplary of their political and national context).

 In 1972, an autobiographical account of a young man who had fought in the Red Guards in China during the Cultural Revolution was published in the US. Entitled The Revenge of Heaven: Journal of a Young Chinese on the first edition Ken Ling was listed as the book’s author. Miriam London and Ta-ling Lee were credited with preparing the text for its publication in English. Written in the first person, the novelistic book was based on a series of long in-person interviews conducted with the former Red Guard in Taiwan, supplemented by written statements. Miriam London, working alongside her husband and fellow social scientist Ivan London, had been recording similar life story interviews for many years, beginning with her involvement with projects working with Soviet emigres. After the book’s publication the man whose story the book told furiously criticised the social scientists who had interviewed him and acused them of profitting from his revelations.

This paper will focus on this case history – discussing its composition, its idiosyncratic formal qualities and its complicated reception – to ask why individual stories became key to making sense of both Communist ideology and actually existing socialism at the height of the Cold War. Were the stories US social scientists were telling really those of the individuals they interviewed or does the Cold War case history reveal more about the assumptions and ideology of the interviewers?

This talk will take place at 3pm-4:30pm on Wednesday 23rd October in the Violet Laidlaw room on the 6th floor of the Chrystal Macmillan Building. All welcome.