Ryszard Kapuscinski Quotes
The Cold War was waged in a particularly brutal and cynical way in Africa, and Africa seemed powerless to do anything to stop it.
Kapuściński, Ryszard. The Shadow of the Sun. Translated by Klara Glowczewska, Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.
This editorial marked what most people agreed was the end of the Cold War.
The occasion was the visit to Washington of French Minister M. Jean Letourneau. The French were fighting the communists in Vietnam and the U. S., not yet in the fight, promised material and political aid, but no military participation. It was almost a decade later that America sent its first military personnel to Vietnam. The West was persuaded that the French could handle the situation. When they were defeated, America and Britain assumed that it was the notorious military incompetence of the French that accounted for the situation rather than the competence and commitment of the Vietnamese Communists and their support of the majority of the people.
Baruch was the first politician to use of the phrase "cold war." It had actually been originated by a friend and speechwriter, Herbert Bayard Swope, who had proposed using the phrase earlier. Baruch thought that too early and waited.
Compare this to Bernard Baruch's quotation about a cold war the year before.
Ironically, at the time she wrote this column, Mrs. Roosevelt was being accused of being a communist by some Southerners who associated her strong views against racism and segregation. Some in the North thought she was a communist because of her active role in the New Deal, Yet here she was, willing to use military force to prevent Soviet expansion.
The Scientific Project that developed the Atomic Bomb. He was a strong advocate for disarmament and that was being debated at the United Nations. He was critical of Bernard Baruch’s tactics but it soon was clear to almost all that the Russians were not interested in a serious UN supervised disarmament. Oppenheimer was profoundly disappointed when it was clear that disarmament was being blocked by the Russians and their veto. After that he didn’t trust the Russians, and concentrated on trying have US policies that would not goad the Russians into an arms race. This quotation is particularly important because in an effort to discredit his views on nuclear policy some politicians accused him of being a security risk with the innuendo that he was a communist and even a Russian agent.
Ryszard Kapuściński was a Polish journalist, photographer, poet and author. He received many awards and was considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Kapuściński's personal journals in book form attracted both controversy and admiration for blurring the conventions of reportage with the allegory and magical realism of literature. He was the Communist-era Polish Press Agency's only correspondent in Africa during decolonization, and also worked in South America and Asia. Between 1956 and 1981 he reported on 27 revolutions and coups, until he was fired because of his support for the pro-democracy Solidarity movement in his native country. He was celebrated by other practitioners of the genre. The acclaimed Italian reportage-writer Tiziano Terzani, Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, and Chilean writer Luis Sepúlveda accorded him the title "Maestro".
