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David Guest (communist)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

David Guest
David Guest (left) meets Harry Pollitt in Spain
Born
David Haden-Guest

(1911-01-06)6 January 1911
Died28 July 1938(1938-07-28) (aged 27)
Gandesa, Spain
Cause of deathKilled in action
Resting placeGandesa
NationalityBritish
Alma materTrinity College, Cambridge
Occupation(s)Mathematician, philosopher
Years active1931–1938
PartnerSuzanne McShane
ParentLeslie Haden-Guest, 1st Baron Haden-Guest & Muriel Ethel Carmel Goldsmid
RelativesPeter Haden-Guest, 4th Baron Haden-Guest (brother)
Military service
Allegiance Spanish Republic
Service/branch
International Brigades
UnitBritish Battalion of the "Abraham Lincoln" XV International Brigade
Battles/warsSpanish Civil War

David Guest (6 January 1911[1]– 28 July 1938) was a British mathematician and philosopher who volunteered to fight for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and was killed in Spain in 1938. He was the uncle of American-British musician, actor and director Christopher Guest.

YouTube Encyclopedic

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  • USA vs USSR Fight! The Cold War: Crash Course World History #39
  • British Communism 1920 - 1943
  • David Skarica: The Only Difference Between the Soviet Union and the USA is a Printing Press

Transcription

Hi, I’m John Green, This is Crash Course World History and today we’re gonna talk about the Cold War, which actually lasted into my lifetime, which means that I can bore you with stories from my past like your grandpa does. When I was a kid, they made us practice hiding under our desks in the event of a nuclear attack, because, you know, school desks are super good at repelling radiation. [formica is magical stuff] Mr. Green, Mr. Green! Right, remember in elementary school there was this special guest who’d defected from the Soviet Union, and he had-- --Like this crazy Russian accent and he kept going on and on about how-- Reagan should spit in Gorbachev’s face instead of signing treaties with him. And I was like, whoa dude calm down. You’re in a room full of third graders. And then for like months afterward on the playground, we’d play Reagan:Gorbachev and spit in each other’s faces. Those were the days. Sometimes I forget that you’re me, Me from the Past. [ahhh… so sweet!] Yeah, it’s just really nice to talk to you and feel like you’re lis— You’re boring. Cue the intro. [ah ha! there it is.] [BEST] [intro music] [intro music] [intro music] [intro music] [intro music] [EVER!] So the Cold War was a rivalry between the USSR and the USA that played out globally. We’ve tried to shy away from calling conflicts ideological or civilizational here on Crash Course, but in this case, the “clash of civilizations” model really does apply. Socialism, at least as Marx constructed it, wanted to take over the world, and many Soviets saw themselves in a conflict with bourgeois capitalism itself. And the Soviets saw American rebuilding efforts in Europe and Japan as the U.S. trying to expand its markets, which, by the way, is exactly what we were doing. So the U.S. feared that the USSR wanted to destroy democratic and capitalist institutions. And the Soviets feared that the US wanted to use its money and power to dominate Europe and eventually destroy the Soviet system. And both parties were right to be worried. It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you. [tinfoil hats, always in season] Now of course we’ve seen a lot of geopolitical struggles between major world powers here on Crash Course, but this time there was the special added bonus that war could lead to the destruction of the human species. That was new for world history, and it’s worth remembering: It’s still new. Here’s the period of time we’ve discussed on Crash Course. And this is how long we’ve had the technological capability to exterminate ourselves. So that’s worrisome. Immediately after World War II, the Soviets created a sphere of influence in eastern Europe, dominating the countries where the Red Army had pushed back the Nazis, which is why Winston Churchill famously said in 1946 that an “Iron Curtain” had descended across Europe. While the dates of the Cold War are usually given between 1945 and 1990, a number of historians will tell you that it actually started during World War II. Stalin’s distrust of the U.S. and Britain kept growing as they refused to invade Europe and open up a second front against the Nazis. And some even say that the decision to drop the first Atomic Bombs on Japan was motivated in part by a desire to intimidate the Soviets. That sort of worked, but only insofar as it motivated the Soviets to develop atomic bombs of their own— they successfully tested their first one in 1949. From the beginning, the U.S had the advantage because it had more money and power and could provide Europe protection what with its army and one of a kind nuclear arsenal while Europe rebuilt. The USSR had to rebuild itself, and also they had the significant disadvantage of being controlled by noted asshat Joseph Stalin. I will remind you, it’s not cursing if he’s wearing an ass for a hat. [way to hang your asshat on a technicality] Oh, I guess it’s time for the open letter. [professionally propels toward prop like a perfectly poised & practiced projectile] An Open Letter to Joseph Stalin. But first, let’s see what’s in the secret compartment today. Oh, it’s silly putty. Silly putty: the thing that won the Cold War. [gotta be a Reagan joke in there somewhere] This is exactly the kind of useless consumer good that would never have been produced in the Soviet Union. And it is because we had so much more consumer spending, on stuff like silly putty, that we won the Cold War. Go team! Dear Joseph Stalin, You really sucked. There was a great moment in your life, at your first wife’s funeral, when you said, “I don’t think I shall ever love again.” And then later, you had that wife’s whole family killed. [solid case for NOT putting a ring on it] Putting aside the fact that you’re responsible for tens of millions of deaths, I don’t like you because of the way that you treated your son, Yakov. I mean, you were really mean to him and then he shot himself and he didn’t die and you said, “He can’t even shoot straight.” And then later, when he was captured during World War II, you had a chance to exchange prisoners for him, but you declined. And then he died in a prison camp. You were a terrible leader, a terrible person, and a terrible father. Best wishes, John Green Alright, let’s go to the Thought Bubble. Europe was the first battleground of the Cold War, especially Germany, which was divided into 2 parts with the former capital, Berlin, also divided into 2 parts. and yes, I know the western part was divided into smaller occupation zones, but I’m simplifying. In 1948, the Soviets tried to cut off West Berlin, by closing the main road that led into the city, but the Berlin airlift stopped them. And then in 1961, the Soviets tried again and this time they were much more successful building a wall around West Berlin, although it’s worth noting that the thing was up for less than 30 years. I mean, Meatloaf’s career has lasted longer than the Berlin Wall did.[Oh y-- NOOO!!] The U.S. response to the Soviets was a policy called containment; it basically involved stopping the spread of communism by standing up to the Soviets wherever they seemed to want to expand. In Europe this meant spending a lot of money. First the Marshall Plan spent $13 billion on re-building western Europe with grants and credits that Europeans would spend on American consumer goods and on construction. Capitalism’s cheap food and plentiful stuff, it was hoped, would stop the spread of communism. The US also tried to slow the spread of communism by founding NATO and with CIA interventions in elections [looked better on paper] where communists had a chance, as in Italy. But despite all the great spy novels and shaken not stirred martinis, the Cold War never did heat up in Europe. Probably the most important part of the Cold War that people just don’t remember these days is the nuclear arms race. Both sides developed nuclear arsenals, the Soviets initially with the help of spies who stole American secrets. Eventually the nuclear arsenals were so big that the U.S. and USSR agreed on a strategy appropriately called MAD, which stood for “mutually assured destruction.” Thanks Thought Bubble. And yes, nuclear weapons were, and are, capable of destroying humanity many times over. [regardless of Iran's access to Photoshop] But only once or twice did we get close to nuclear war: during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and then again in 1983, when we forgot to give the Russians the heads up that we were doing some war games, which made it look like we had launched a first strike. OUR BAD! [closer to ultimate fail than epic fail] But even though mutually assured destruction prevented direct conflict, there was plenty of hot war in the Cold War. The Korean War saw lots of fighting between communists and capitalists, as did the Vietnam War. I mean, these days we remember “the domino effect” as silly paranoia, but after Korea and especially China became communist, Vietnam’s movement toward communism seemed very much a threat to Japan, which the U.S. had helped re-make into a vibrant capitalist ally. So the US got bogged down in one of its longest wars while the Soviets assisted the North Vietnamese army in the Viet Cong. But then we paid them back by supporting the anti-communist mujaheddin after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Of course, as we now know, nobody conquers Afghanistan …unless you are the mongols. [The tune of truly tendering terror to tons of tearfully troubled tribes] So after 10 disastrous years, the Soviets finally abandoned Afghanistan. Some of those mujahedeen later became members of the Taliban, though, so it’s difficult to say that anyone won that war. But it wasn’t just Asia: In Nicaragua, the US supported rebels to overthrow the leftist government; in El Salvador, the US bolstered authoritarian regimes that were threatened by left-wing guerrillas. The United States ended up supporting a lot of awful governments, like the one in Guatemala, which held onto power through the use of death squads. [like i said, looked better on paper] Frankly, all our attempts to stabilize governments in Latin America led to some very unstable Latin American governments, and quite a lot of violence. And then there were the luke-warm conflicts, like The Suez Crisis where British and French paratroopers were sent in to try to stop Egypt from nationalizing the Suez canal. Or all the American covert operations to keep various countries from “falling” to communism. These included the famous CIA-engineered coup to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq after his government attempted to nationalize Iran’s oil industry. And the CIA helping Chile’s General Augusto Pinochet overthrow democratically elected Marxist president Salvador Allende in 1973. And lest we think the Americans were the only bad guys in this, the Soviets used force to crush popular uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. So, you may have noticed that our discussion of the Cold War has branched out from Europe to include Asia, and the Middle East, and Latin America. And in fact, almost every part of the globe was involved in some way with the planet being divided into three “worlds.” The first world was the U.S., Western Europe and any place that embraced capitalism and a more or less democratic form of government. The Second World was the Soviet Union and its satellites, mostly the Warsaw Pact nations, China and Cuba. The Third World was everyone else and we don’t use this term anymore because it lumps together a hugely diverse range of countries. We’ll talk more about the specific economic and development challenges faced by the so-called “Third World countries,” but the big one in terms of the Cold War, was that neither the U.S. nor the Soviets wanted any of these countries to remain neutral. Every nation was supposed to pick sides, either capitalist or communist, and while it seems like an easy choice now, in the 50s and 60s, it wasn’t nearly so clear. I mean, for a little while, it seemed like the Soviets might come out ahead, at least in the Third World. For a while, capitalism, and especially the United States, seemed to lose some of its luster. The US propped up dictatorships, had a poor civil rights record, we sucked at women’s gymnastics. Plus, the Soviets were the first to put a satellite, a man, and a dog into space. Plus, Marxists just seemed cooler, which is why you never see Milton Friedman t-shirts... until now available at DFTBA.com. I like that, Stan, but I’m more of a centrist. Can I get a Keynes shirt? Yes. That, now that’s hot. But Soviet socialism did not finally prove to be a viable alternative to industrial capitalism. Over time, state-run economies just generally don’t fare as well as private enterprise, and people like living in a world where they can have more stuff. More importantly, Soviet policies were just bad: collectivized agriculture stymied production and led to famine; suppression of dissent and traditional cultures made people angry; and no one likes suffering the humiliation of driving a Yugo. But why the Cold War ended when it did is one of the most interesting questions of the 20th century. It probably wasn’t Ronald Reagan bankrupting the Soviets, despite what some politicians believe. The USSR had more satellite states that it needed to spend more to prop up than the U.S. had to invest in its Allies. And the Soviet system could never keep up with economic growth in the West. But, probably the individual most responsible for the end of the Cold War was Mikhail Baryshnikov. [Um...] No? Mikhail Gorbachev? Well, that’s boring. [and far less lycra-clad] I always thought the Soviets danced their way to freedom. No? It was Glasnost and Perestroika? [not the cultural resonance of White Nights?] Alright. but Gorbachev’s Perestroika and Glosnost opened up the Soviet political and economic systems with contested local elections, less restricted civil society groups, less censorship, more autonomy for the Soviet Republics, more non-state-run businesses and more autonomy for state-run farms. Glasnost or “openness” led to more information from the west and less censorship led to a flood of criticism as people realized how much poorer the second world was than the first. And one by one, often quite suddenly, former communist states collapsed. In Germany, the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 [pulled down with the Gipper's own hands] and East and West Germany were reunited in 1990. In Poland, the Gdansk dockworker’s union Solidarity turned into a mass political movement and won 99 of the 100 seats it was allowed to contest in the 1989 election. Hungary held multiparty elections in 1990. The same year, mass demonstrations led to elections in Czechoslovakia. In 1993, that country split up into Slovakia and the Czech Republic, the happiest and most mutually beneficial divorce since Cher left Sonny. Of course sometimes the transition away from communism was violent and painful. In Romania, for instance, the communist dictator Ceaucescu held onto power until he was tried and put before a firing squad at the end of 1989. And it took until 1996 for a non-communist government to take power there. And in Yugoslavia, well, not so great. And in Russia, it’s a little bit Putin-ey. Ah! Putin. But just twenty years later, it’s hard to believe that the world was once dominated by two super powers held in check mutually assured destruction. [sure didn't work for Harry & Voldemort] What’s really amazing to me, though, is that until the late 1980s, it felt like the Cold War was gonna go on forever. Time seems to slow as it approaches us, & living in the post-Cold War nuclear age, we should remember that the past feels distant even when it’s near, and that the future seems assured— even though it isn’t. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next week. [don't ask. you try & corral the talent when they're a NYT best-selling author] Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller. Our script supervisor is Meredith Danko. Our associate producer is Danica Johnson. The show is written by my high school history teacher Raoul Meyer and myself. And our graphics team is Thought Bubble. [where time may be cold, but not too war-y] Last week’s phrase of the week was "Justin Bieber" [Johnny Bookwriter is a full-on Belieber] Thanks for that suggestion. [he said, sincerely] If you’d like to suggest future phrases of the week, you can do so in comments where you can also ask questions about today’s video that will be answered by our team of historians. [or fought out amongst yourselves with varying degrees of merit and clarity] Thanks for watching Crash Course and as we say in my hometown, don’t forget Folly and Desperation Are Ofttimes Hard to Tell Apart.” [Did you know John is a triple threat?] Ow.

Biography

Guest was the son of Leslie Haden-Guest (created 1st Baron Haden-Guest in 1950), a longtime Labour Party Member of Parliament and Muriel Ethel Carmel Goldsmid, daughter of Albert Goldsmid (a pioneering Zionist as head of Hovevei Zion in Great Britain and Ireland) from the Goldsmid family of merchant bankers.

He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1929 and studied from 1930 to 1931 in Göttingen in Germany, where he witnessed the latter years of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazi Party.[2] He became involved "anti-fascist activity".[3] Arrested a communist youth demonstration, he was released after a two weeks.[4] On his return he joined the Communist Party at Cambridge in 1931.[3] There Guest became the head of a party cell that included John Cornford, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Victor Kiernan and James Klugmann.[4] This enabled dons such as Maurice Dobb and John Bernal to take a back-seat. It was claimed that David Guest would "stride into hall at Trinity wearing a hammer and sickle pin in his lapel."[5]

In 1933, after leaving Cambridge Guest moved to Battersea, South London, where he lectured in mathematics and worked for the Communist party at the Peoples' Bookshop in Lavender Hill. He soon became active in Battersea Young Communist League. While working at the bookshop he joined the shop workers union. In May 1935, he organised a Youth Peace Parade of fifty young people, some dressed as nurses, others with gas masks and with stretchers, to warn of war. For a short period of time he taught at a secondary school for English-speaking children in Moscow, but returned to England to lecture at University College in Southampton.[6]

In 1938 he left his post as a lecturer at University College to volunteer for the International Brigades fighting in Spain. He wrote of his decision:

Today we have certainly entered a period of crisis, when the arguments of 'normal times' no longer apply, when considerations of most immediate usefulness come in. That is why I have decided to take the opportunity of going to Spain.

Guest arrived in Spain on 31 March 1938 and joined the British Battalion of the International Brigades. The Battalion went into action at the Battle of the Ebro which began on 25 July 1938. Three days later, on 28 July,[7][8] Guest was killed on Hill 481[9] at Gandesa by a sniper as he read a newspaper.[10][11]

After his death, notes he had made while lecturing at the Marx Memorial Workers' School were published as A Text Book of Dialectical Materialism in 1939.

Publications

  • Guest, David, (1939) A Text Book of Dialectical Materialism, Lawrence And Wishart (republished as Lectures on Marxist Philosophy (1963))

References

  1. ^ Birgit Sondergeld (2010). Spanische Erinnerungskultur: Die Assmann'sche Theorie des kulturellen Gedächtnisses und der Bürgerkrieg 1936–1939. Springer-Verlag. p. 255. ISBN 9783531924915. Archived from the original on 31 January 2016. Retrieved 21 January 2015.
  2. ^ Helena Sheehan Marxism and the Philosophy of Science.
  3. ^ a b Michael Walker. David Guest. Communist Biogs. Retrieved 17 January 2024.
  4. ^ a b "Biography of David Guest". Archived from the original on 20 October 2014. Retrieved 18 September 2014.
  5. ^ Phillip Knightley, Philby: KGB Masterspy (1988) page 32
  6. ^ "Guest David". Archived from the original on 30 October 2020. Retrieved 25 July 2021.
  7. ^ Sugarman, Martin (2012). "Against Fascism – Jews who served in The International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War" (PDF). Jewish Virtual Library. Archived (PDF) from the original on 21 April 2014. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  8. ^ Carmody, Jim; Baxell, Richard (2012). "List of those who died in Spain". International Brigade Memorial Trust. Archived from the original on 7 February 2012. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  9. ^ Jenkins, Nicholas (2012). "David Haden-Guest". W.H. Auden – Family Ghosts. Archived from the original on 5 August 2012. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  10. ^ Beaumont, Peter (1 May 2005). "Forgotten warriors return to battle sites". The Guardian. London. ISSN 0261-3077. OCLC 60623878. Archived from the original on 29 August 2013. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  11. ^ "TEACHER KILLED IN SPAIN – David Guest, British Communist, Fought With Loyalists". The New York Times. 7 August 1938. Retrieved 6 April 2012.

External links

Further reading

  • Guest, Carmel Hayden (1939) David Guest – A Scientist Fights For Freedom 1911–1938, Lawrence and Wishart.
This page was last edited on 18 February 2024, at 00:38
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