The Human Factor is an espionage novel by Graham Greene, first published in 1978 and adapted into

a 1979 film, directed by Otto Preminger using a screenplay by Tom Stoppard.

Plot summary

Maurice Castle is an ageing bureaucrat in the British secret service MI6. Married to a black African woman with
whom he fell in love during his previous stint in apartheid South Africa, he now lives a quiet life in the suburbs and
looks forward to retirement. As the book begins, however, a leak has been traced to the African section in London
where he works and threatens to disrupt this precarious tranquility. Castle and younger colleague Davis make light
of the resulting inquiry, but when Davis is accused on circumstantial evidence and quietly "disposed of", Castle
begins to wrestle with questions of loyalty, morality and conscience. On the one hand, Castle undertakes his day-to-
day job professionally, and is willing to do what is more than required for both Davis and Daintry, his boss. On the
other hand, Castle is grateful to Carson, who, as a Communist, has helped Castle's wife escape South Africa. In
return, Castle decides to help the Communists and believes that by helping them, he is helping his wife's people --
not knowing that Moscow has all along been using him for entirely different purposes.

Rather than action or high politics, the novel builds its suspense by focusing on the psychological burdens of the
pawns in the game: doubt and paranoia bred by a culture of secrecy, the sophisticated amorality of the men at the
top, and above all, loyalties (to whom and what and at what cost?) Greene's characters are complete psychological
portraits located within the context of the Cold War and the impact of international affairs on the complicated lives
of individuals and vice versa. The interplay of international politics on the individual level is a trademark of this
author.

Major themes

In his 1980 autobiography Ways of Escape, Greene wrote that his aim with this book was "to write a novel of
espionage free from the conventional violence, which has not, in spite of James Bond, been a feature of the British
Secret Service. "I wanted to present the Service unromantically as a way of life, men going daily to their office to
earn their pensions." Writing in his 70s, Greene drew on his own experience in MI6 and explored the moral
ambiguities raised by his old boss, legendary Soviet double agent Kim Philby, although Greene stated that Castle,
the main character in the novel, was not based on Philby.

Another theme Greene explored was what he considered the hypocrisy of the West's relations with South Africa
under apartheid. He thought that even though the West publicly opposed apartheid, "they simply could not let South
Africa succumb to black power and Communism" (from the Introduction to the 1982 edition of The Human
Factor).

Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), colloquially known as MI6 [1]

is the United Kingdom's
external intelligence agency, part of the country's intelligence community. Under the direction of the Joint
Intelligence Committee (JIC), it works alongside the Security Service (MI5), Government Communications
Headquarters (GCHQ) and the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS). Within the civil service community the service is
colloquially referred to as 'Box 850' which comes from its old post office box number.[2][3][4]

Since 1995, the Secret Intelligence Service has had its headquarters at Vauxhall Cross on the South Bank of the
Thames.

History
Foundation

The Service is derived from the Secret Service Bureau, which was founded in 1909.[1] It was a joint initiative of the
Admiralty and the War Office to control secret intelligence operations in the UK and overseas, particularly
concentrating on the activities of the Imperial German government. The Bureau was split into naval and army
sections which, over time, specialised in foreign espionage and internal counter-espionage activities respectively.
This specialisation was because the Admiralty wanted to know the maritime strength of the Imperial German Navy.
This specialisation was formalised before 1914. When World War I started, the two sections underwent
administrative changes so that the foreign section became the Directorate of Military Intelligence Section 6 (MI6),
the name by which it is frequently known in popular culture today. Its first director was Captain Sir George
Mansfield Smith-Cumming, who often dropped the "Smith" in routine communication. He typically signed
correspondence with his initial "C" in green ink. This usage evolved as a code name, and has been adhered to by all
subsequent directors of SIS when signing documents to retain anonymity.[1][5]

[edit] World War I

The service's performance during First World War was mixed, because it was unable to establish a network in
Germany itself. The majority of its results came from military and commercial intelligence collected through
networks in neutral countries, occupied territories, and Russia.[6]

[edit] Inter-War period

After the war, resources were significantly reduced. 'Circulating Sections' were introduced to give greater control on
its objectives to its consumer departments, mainly the War Office and Admiralty.[citation needed] The Circulating
Sections established intelligence requirements for the operational 'Group' sections to fulfill and passed the
intelligence back to the consumers. This relationship was termed the '1921 arrangement' and still provides the basis
for the internal structure of the agency.[citation needed]

During the 1920s SIS established a close operational relationship with the diplomatic service. It established the post
of "Passport Control Officer" within embassies, based on a system developed during WWI by British Army
Intelligence.[7] This provided operatives with a degree of cover and diplomatic immunity but had become
compromised by the 1930s. {Venlo Incident}.

The debate over the future structure of British Intelligence continued at length after the end of hostilities but
Cumming managed to engineer the return of the Service to Foreign Office control. At this time the organisation was
known in Whitehall by a variety of titles including the 'Foreign Intelligence Service', the 'Secret Service', 'MI1(c)',
the 'Special Intelligence Service' and even 'C's organisation'. Around 1920, it began increasingly to be referred to as
the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), a title that it has continued to use to the present day and which was enshrined
in statute in the Intelligence Services Act 1994.[1]

In the immediate post-war years under Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming and throughout most of the 1920s, the SIS
was focused on Communism- in particular, Russian Bolshevism. Examples include a thwarted operation to
overthrow the Bolshevik government[8] in 1918 by SIS agents Sidney George Reilly[9] and Sir Robert Bruce
Lockhart,[10] as well as more orthodox espionage efforts within early Soviet Russia headed by Captain George Hill.

Smith-Cumming died, in his office, in 1923 and was replaced as "C" by Admiral Sir Hugh 'Quex' Sinclair. While
lacking the charisma of his predecessor, he had a clear vision for the future of the agency[citation needed] which
developed a range of new activities under his leadership.[citation needed] Under Sinclair the following sections were
created:

• A central foreign counter-espionage Circulating Section, Section V, to liaise with the Security Service to
collate counter-espionage reports from overseas stations.
• An economic intelligence section, Section VII, to deal with trade, industrial and contraband.
• A clandestine radio communications organisation, Section VIII, to communicate with operatives and agents
overseas.
• Section N to exploit the contents of foreign diplomatic bags
• Section D to conduct political covert actions and paramilitary operations in time of war. Section D would
come to be the foundation of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War.[7]
With the emergence of Germany as a threat following the ascendence of the Nazis, in the early 1930s attention was
shifted in that direction.[7] Whilst the service acquired several reliable sources within the Government and the
German Admiralty, its information was less comprehensive than that provided by the diplomatic network of Robert
Vansittart, the Permanent Undersecretary at the Foreign Office.[citation needed]

Sinclair died in 1939, after an illness, and was replaced as "C" by Lt. Col. Stewart Menzies (Horse Guards), who
had been with the service since the end of WWI.

[edit] World War II

During the Second World War the human intelligence work of the service was overshadowed by several other
initiatives:

• The cryptanalytic effort undertaken by the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), the bureau
responsible for interception and decryption of foreign communications at Bletchley Park.
• The extensive "double-cross" system run by MI5 to feed misleading intelligence to the Germans
• Imagery intelligence activities conducted by the RAF Photographic Reconnaissance Unit (Now JARIC, The
National Imagery Exploitation Centre).

GC&CS was the source of ULTRA intelligence. ULTRA permitted Allied success in the Battle of the Atlantic.

The most significant failure of the service during the war was known as the Venlo incident, named for the Dutch
town where much of the operation took place. Agents of the German army secret service, the Abwehr, posed as
high-ranking officers involved in a plot to depose Hitler. In a series of meetings between SIS agents and the
'conspirators', SS plans to abduct the SIS team were shelved due to the presence of Dutch police. When a meeting
took place without police presence, two SIS agents were duly abducted by the SS.

In the early stages of the war Section D was significantly expanded and given a distinct identity as the Special
Operations Executive. SOE operations were overtly offensive in the occupied countries, which clashed with the
more discreet approach of SIS, leading to a significant level of friction and increased risk to SIS operatives. The
increased security in the occupied territories as a result of SOE activity, significantly reduced freedom of movement
for SIS operatives and so curtailed operations.

Despite these difficulties the service nevertheless conducted substantial and successful operations in both occupied
Europe and in the Middle East and Far East where it operated under the cover name 'Interservice Liaison
Department' (ISLD).

[edit] Cold War

In 1946 SIS absorbed the "rump" remnant of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), dispersing the latter's
personnel and equipment between its operational divisions or "controllerates" and new Directorates for Training and
Development and for War Planning. The 1921 arrangement was streamlined with the geographical, operational
units redesignated "Production Sections", sorted regionally under Controllers, all under a Director of Production.
The Circulating Sections were renamed 'Requirements Sections' and placed under a Directorate of Requirements.

SIS operations against the USSR were extensively compromised by the fact that the post-war Counter-Espionage
Section, R5, was headed for two years by an agent working for the Soviet Union, Harold Adrian Russell "Kim"
Philby. Although Philby's damage was mitigated for several years by his transfer as Head of Station in Turkey, he
later returned and was the SIS intelligence liaison officer at the Embassy in Washington D.C.. In this capacity he
compromised a programme of joint U.S.-UK paramilitary operations in Enver Hoxha's Albania (although it has
been shown that these operations were further compromised "on the ground" by poor security discipline amongst
the Albanian émigrés recruited to undertake the operations). Philby was eased out of office and quietly retired in
1953 after the defection of his friends and fellow members of the "Cambridge spy ring" Donald Duart Maclean and
Guy Burgess.
SIS suffered further embarrassment when it turned out that an officer involved in both the Vienna and Berlin tunnel
operations had been turned as a Soviet agent during internment by the Chinese during the Korean War. This agent,
George Blake, returned from his internment to be treated as something of a hero by his contemporaries in "the
office". His security authorisation was restored, and in 1953 he was posted to the Vienna Station where the original
Vienna tunnels had been running for years. After compromising these to his Soviet controllers, he was subsequently
assigned to the British team involved on Operation Gold, the Berlin tunnel, and which was, consequently, blown
from the outset. Blake was eventually identified, arrested and faced trial in court for espionage and was sent to
prison—only to be liberated and extracted to the USSR in 1964. In 1956 MI6 Director John Alexander Sinclair had
to resign after the botched affair of the death of Lionel Crabb.

Despite these setbacks, SIS began to recover in the early 1960s as a result of improved vetting and security, and a
series of successful penetrations, one of the Polish security establishment codenamed NODDY and the other the
GRU Colonel Oleg Penkovsky. Penkovsky ran for two years as a considerable success, providing several thousand
photographed documents, including Red Army rocketry manuals that allowed U.S. National Photographic
Interpretation Center (NPIC) analysts to recognise the deployment pattern of Soviet SS4 MRBMs and SS5 IRBMs
in Cuba in October 1962. SIS operations against the USSR continued to gain pace through the remainder of the
Cold War, arguably peaking with the recruitment in the 1970s of Oleg Gordievsky whom SIS ran for the better part
of a decade, then successfully exfiltrated from the USSR across the Finnish border in 1985. The real scale and
impact of SIS activities during the second half of the Cold War remains unknown, however, because the bulk of
their most successful targeting operations against Soviet officials were the result of "Third Country" operations
recruiting Soviet sources travelling abroad in Asia and Africa. These included the defection to the SIS Tehran
Station in 1982 of KGB officer Vladimir Kuzichkin, the son of a senior Politburo member and a member of the
KGB's internal Second Chief Directorate who provided SIS and the British government with warning of the
mobilisation of the KGB's Alpha Force during the 1991 August Coup which, briefly, toppled Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev.

SIS activities allegedly included a range of covert political action successes, including the overthrow of Mohammed
Mossadeq in Iran in 1953 (in collaboration with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency), the again collaborative
toppling of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo in 1961, and the triggering of an internal conflict between Lebanese
paramilitary groups in the second half of the 1980s that effectively distracted them from further hostage takings of
Westerners in the region.

A number of intelligence operatives have left SIS. Usually they have either found new employment in the civilian
world. In the late 1990s, an SIS officer called Richard Tomlinson was dismissed and later wrote a story of his
experiences entitled "The Big Breach".

[edit] End of Cold War to present

The end of the Cold War led to a reshuffle of existing priorities. The Soviet Bloc ceased to swallow the lion's share
of operational priorities, although the stability and intentions of a weakened but still nuclear-capable Federal Russia
constituted a significant concern. Instead, functional rather than geographical intelligence requirements came to the
fore such as counter-proliferation (via the agency's Production and Targeting, Counter-Proliferation Section) which
had been a sphere of activity since the discovery of Pakistani physics students studying nuclear-weapons related
subjects in 1974; counter-terrorism (via two joint sections run in collaboration with the Security Service, one for
Irish republicanism and one for international terrorism); counter-narcotics and serious crime (originally set up under
the Western Hemisphere Controllerate in 1989); and a 'global issues' section looking at matters such as the
environment and other public welfare issues. In the mid-1990s these were consolidated into a new post of
Controller, Global and Functional.

During the transition, then-C Sir Colin McColl embraced a new, albeit limited, policy of openness towards the press
and public, with 'public affairs' falling into the brief of Director, Counter-Intelligence and Security (renamed
Director, Security and Public Affairs). McColl's policies were part and parcel with a wider 'open government
initiative' developed from 1993 by the government of John Major. As part of this, SIS operations, and those of the
national signals intelligence agency, GCHQ, were placed on a statutory footing through the 1994 Intelligence
Services Act. Although the Act provided procedures for Authorisations and Warrants, this essentially enshrined
mechanisms that had been in place at least since 1953 (for Authorisations) and 1985 (under the Interception of
Communications Act, for warrants). Under this Act, since 1994, SIS and GCHQ activities have been subject to
scrutiny by Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee.

In order to better control information collected by the disparate intelligence community, IT Chief Richard Lavis and
Assistant IT Chief Robert Postak designed and implemented a secret database project entitled TITW until it was
scuttled in the late 1990's over budget concerns, it had favored positively in several SIS actions.

During the mid-1990s the British intelligence community was subjected to a comprehensive costing review by the
Government. As part of broader defence cut-backs SIS had its resources cut back 25% across the board and senior
management was reduced by 40%. As a consequence of these cuts, the Requirements division (formerly the
Circulating Sections of the 1921 Arrangement) were deprived of any representation on the Board of Directors. At
the same time, the Middle East and Africa Controllerates were pared back and amalgamated. According to the
findings of Lord Butler of Brockwell's Review of Weapons of Mass Destruction, the reduction of operational
capabilities in the Middle East and of the Requirements division's ability to challenge the quality of the information
the Middle East Controllerate was providing weakened the Joint Intelligence Committee's estimates of Iraq's
nonconventional weapons programmes. These weaknesses were major contributors to the UK's erroneous
assessments of Iraq's 'weapons of mass destruction' prior to the 2003 invasion of that country. Following the
September 11, 2001 attacks funding was increased.

In the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, MI6 conducted Operation Mass Appeal which was a campaign to plant
stories about Iraq's WMDs in the media. The operation was exposed in the Sunday Times in December 2003.
Claims by former weapons inspector Scott Ritter suggest that similar propaganda campaigns against Iraq date back
well into the 1990s. Ritter claims that MI6 recruited him in 1997 to help with the propaganda effort. "The aim was
to convince the public that Iraq was a far greater threat than it actually was" - Scott Ritter, Sunday Times, December
28, 2003.

On 6 May 2004 it was announced that Sir Richard Dearlove was to be replaced as head of the SIS by John Scarlett,
former chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Scarlett is an unusually high-profile appointment to the job,
and gave evidence at the Hutton Inquiry.

On 15 November 2006, MI6 allowed an interview with current operations officers for the first time. The interview
was on the Colin Murray show on BBC Radio 1. The two officers (one male and one female) had their voices
disguised for security reasons. The officers compared their real experience with the fictional portrayal of MI6 in the
James Bond films. While denying that there ever existed a "licence to kill" and reiterating that MI6 operated under
British law, the officers confirmed that there is a 'Q'-like figure who is head of the technology department, and that
their director is referred to as 'C'. The officers described the lifestyle as quite glamorous and very varied, with plenty
of overseas travel and adventure, and described their role primarily as intelligence gatherers, developing
relationships with potential sources. The interview is seen largely as a public relations and employment tactic,
following the placement of advertising for applicants on the agency's website for the first time in April 2006.

[edit] SIS headquarters

The SIS building at Vauxhall Cross, London, seen from Vauxhall Bridge
 Main article: SIS Building

SIS headquarters, since 1995, is at 85, Vauxhall Cross, along the Albert Embankment in Vauxhall on the banks of
the River Thames by Vauxhall Bridge, London. Previous headquarters have been Century House, 100 Westminster
Bridge Road, Lambeth, 1966-95; and 54, Broadway, off Victoria Street, London SW1, 1924-66. (Although SIS
operated from Broadway, it was actually based at St. James's Street).

Designed by Terry Farrell and built by John Laing,[11] the developer Regalian Properties PLC approached the
Government in 1987 to see if they had any interest in the proposed building. At the same time MI5 was seeking
alternative accommodation and co-location of the two services was studied. In the end this proposal was abandoned
due to the lack of buildings of adequate size (existing or proposed) and the security considerations of providing a
single target for attacks. In July 1988 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher approved the purchase of the new building
for the SIS. At this stage the government proposed to pay for the building outright in order to maintain secrecy over
the intended use of the site. It is important to note that at this time the existence of MI6 was not officially
acknowledged.

The building design was reviewed to incorporate the necessary protection for Britain's foreign intelligence gathering
agency. This includes overall increased security, extensive computer suites, technical areas, bomb blast protection,
emergency back-up systems and protection against electronic eavesdropping. While the details and cost of
construction have been released, about ten years after the original National Audit Office (NAO) report was written,
some of the service's special requirements remain classified. The NAO report Thames House and Vauxhall Cross
has certain details omitted, describing in detail the cost and problems of certain modifications but not what these
are. Rob Humphrey's London: The Rough Guide suggests one of these omitted modifications is a tunnel beneath the
Thames to Whitehall. The NAO put the final cost at £135.05m for site purchase and the basic building, or £152.6m
including the service’s special requirements.

The setting of the SIS offices were featured in the James Bond films GoldenEye, The World Is Not Enough, Die
Another Day, and Casino Royale. For the first time MI6 allowed filming of the building itself in The World is Not
Enough for the pre-credits sequence, where a bomb hidden in a briefcase full of money is exploded inside the
building. Originally, the government objected, citing a security risk. However, then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook
said, "After all Bond has done for Britain, it was the least we could do for Bond."

On the evening of 20 September 2000 the building was attacked using a Russian-built RPG-22 anti-tank missile.
Striking the eighth floor, the missile caused only superficial damage. The Anti-Terrorist branch of the Metropolitan
Police attributed responsibility to Irish Republicans, specifically the Real IRA.[12]

Apartheid (meaning separateness in Afrikaans cognate to English apart and -hood) was a system of legal
racial segregation enforced by the National Party government of South Africa between 1948 and 1990. Apartheid
had its roots in the history of colonisation and settlement of southern Africa, with the development of practices and
policies of separation along racial lines and domination by European settlers and their descendants. Following the
general election of 1948,[1], the National Party set in place its programme of Apartheid, with the formalisation and
expansion of existing policies and practices into a system of institutionalised racism and white domination.
Apartheid was dismantled in a series of negotiations from 1990 to 1993, culminating in elections in 1994, the first
in South Africa with universal suffrage. The vestiges of apartheid still shape South African politics and society.

Apartheid legislation classified inhabitants and visitors into racial groups (black, white, coloured, and Indian or
Asian). South African blacks were stripped of their citizenship, legally becoming citizens of one of ten tribally
based and nominally self-governing bantustans (tribal homelands), four of which became nominally independent
states. The homelands occupied relatively small and economically unproductive areas of the country. Many black
South Africans, however, never resided in their identified "homelands". The homeland system disenfranchised
black people residing in "white South Africa"[2] by restricting their voting rights to their own identified black
homeland. The government segregated education, medical care, and other public services, and provided black
people with services greatly inferior to those of whites, and, to a lesser extent, to those of Indians and coloureds.
The education system practised in 'black schools' was designed to prepare blacks for lives as a labouring class.

The system of apartheid sparked significant internal resistance.[3] The government responded to a series of popular
uprisings and protests with police brutality, which in turn increased local support for the armed resistance struggle.
[4]
In response to popular and political resistance, the apartheid government resorted to detentions without trial,
torture, censorship, and the banning of political opposition from organisations such as the African National
Congress (ANC), the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), the Azanian People's Organisation (APO), the Pan
Africanist Congress (PAC), and the United Democratic Front (UDF), which were popularly considered liberation
movements. Despite suffering extreme repression and exile, these organisations maintained popular support for the
anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and forged connections with the international anti-apartheid movement
during this period.[5][6]

White South Africa became increasingly militarised, embarking on the so-called border war with the covert support
of the USA, fighting Cuban and FAPLA forces (People's Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola), the armed
wing of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) forces in Angola, and later sending the South
African Defence Force into townships. The anti-apartheid organisations had strong links with other liberation
struggles in Africa, and often saw their armed resistance to apartheid as part of the socialist struggle against
capitalism.[7]

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Creation of apartheid
o 1.1 Racial segregation and colonialism prior to apartheid
o 1.2 Elections of 1948 and the Group Areas Act
o 1.3 Disenfranchisement of coloured voters
o 1.4 Apartheid legislation
o 1.5 Unity among white South Africans
• 2 Apartheid system
o 2.1 Grand Apartheid, the "homeland" system
o 2.2 Forced removals
o 2.3 Petty Apartheid
o 2.4 Coloured classification
o 2.5 Women under apartheid
o 2.6 Other minorities
• 3 Internal resistance
• 4 International relations
o 4.1 The Commonwealth
o 4.2 United Nations
o 4.3 Organisation for African Unity
o 4.4 Outward-Looking Policy
o 4.5 Cultural and sporting isolation
o 4.6 Western influence
o 4.7 South African Border War
o 4.8 Total onslaught
o 4.9 Cross-border raids
• 5 Conservatism
• 6 State security
o 6.1 State of emergency
• 7 Final years of apartheid
o 7.1 Negotiations
• 8 Contrition
 • 9 See also
• 10 Footnotes
• 11 References

• 12 External links

[edit] Creation of apartheid

[edit] Racial segregation and colonialism prior to apartheid
For more information on the period of history leading up to apartheid, see History of South Africa.

Although the creation of apartheid is usually attributed to the Afrikaner-dominated government of 1948–1990, it is
mostly a legacy of British colonialism which introduced a system of pass laws in the Cape Colony and Natal during
the nineteenth century. [8][9][10] This stemmed from the regulation of blacks' movement from the tribal regions to
those occupied by whites and coloureds, ruled by the British.

The British, for instance, passed the Franchise and Ballot Act in 1892, which limited the black votes by finance and
education, following it up with the Natal Legislative Assembly Bill of 1894, which deprived Indians of the right to
vote. In 1905 the Lagden Commission implemented the General Pass Regulations Bill, which denied blacks the vote
altogether, limited them to fixed areas and inaugurated the infamous Pass System. Then followed the Asiatic
Registration Act (1906) requiring all Indians to register and carry passes, the South Africa Act (1910) that
enfranchised whites, giving them complete political control over all other race groups, the Native Land Act (1913)
which prevented all blacks, except those in the Cape, from buying land outside 'reserves', the Natives in Urban
Areas Bill (1918) designed to force blacks into 'locations', the Urban Areas Act (1923) which introduced residential
segregation in South Africa and provided cheap labour for white industry, the Colour Bar Act (1926), preventing
blacks from practising skilled trades, the Native Administration Act (1927) that made the British Crown, rather than
paramount chiefs, the supreme head over all African affairs, the Native Land and Trust Act (1936) that
complemented the 1913 Native Land Act and, in the same year, the Representation of Natives Act, which removed
blacks from the Cape voters' roll. The final 'apartheid' legislation by the British was the Asiatic Land Tenure Bill
(1946), which banned any further land sales to Indians.

Laws were passed not only to restrict the movement of blacks into these areas, but also to prohibit their movement
from one district to another without a signed pass. Blacks were not allowed onto the streets of towns in the Cape
Colony and Natal after dark and had to carry their passes at all times. Mahatma Gandhi, a young lawyer at the time,
cut his political teeth by organizing non-violent protests against restrictions which hurt middle-class Indians. Jan
Smuts' United Party government began to move away from the rigid enforcement of segregationist laws during
World War II. Amid fears integration would eventually lead the nation to racial assimilation, the legislature
established the Sauer Commission to investigate the effects of the United Party's policies. The commission
concluded integration would bring about a loss of personality for all racial groups. The practice of apartheid
retained many of the features of the above segregationist policies of earlier administrations. Examples include the
1913 Land Act and the various workplace "colour bars". However, Werner Eiselen, the man who led the design of
apartheid, argued that the government could not sustain segregation and white supremacy.[citation needed] He also, in
1948, proposed apartheid as a "political partition" policy instead of segregation in public facilities. Hence, the idea
behind apartheid was more one of political separation, later known as "grand apartheid," than segregation, later
known as "petty apartheid." Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd is considered the most influential politician in the growth of
apartheid and described it as "a policy of good neighbourliness".[11]

Up until 1956 women were for the most part excluded from these pass requirements as attempts to introduce pass
laws for women were met with fierce resistance.[12]

Some authors, such as David Yudelman and Hermann Giliomee, argued the system of Apartheid can be traced to
the labour movement in South Africa and Cape Colony policies as early as 1907.[citation needed]
[edit] Elections of 1948 and the Group Areas Act

"Petty apartheid": sign on Durban beach in English, Afrikaans and Zulu (1989)

In the run-up to the 1948 elections, the main Afrikaner nationalist party, the Herenigde Nasionale Party (Reunited
National Party) under the leadership of Protestant cleric Daniel Francois Malan, campaigned on its policy of
apartheid. The NP narrowly defeated Smuts's United Party and formed a coalition government with another
Afrikaner nationalist party, the Afrikaner Party. Malan became the first apartheid prime minister, and the two
parties later merged to form the National Party (NP). The coalition government immediately began implementing
apartheid policies, passing legislation prohibiting miscegenation and classifying individuals by race. The Group
Areas Act of 1950, designed to separate racial groups geographically, became the heart of the apartheid system. The
Separate Amenities Act was passed in 1953. Under this Act, municipal grounds could be reserved for a particular
race. It created, among other things, separate beaches, buses, hospitals, schools and universities. Signboards such as
"whites only" applied to public areas, even including park benches.

Interracial contact in sport was frowned upon, but there were no segregatory sports laws. The government was able
to keep sport segregated using other legislation, such as the Group Areas Act.

The government tightened existing pass laws, compelling black South Africans to carry identity documents to
prevent the migration of blacks to 'white' South Africa. For blacks, living in cities required employment. Families
were excluded, thus separating wives from husbands and parents from children.

[edit] Disenfranchisement of coloured voters

J.G. Strijdom, Malan's successor as Prime Minister, moved to strip coloureds and blacks of their voting rights in the
Cape Province. The previous government had first introduced the Separate Representation of Voters Bill in
parliament in 1951. However, a group of four voters, G Harris, WD Franklin, WD Collins and Edgar Deane,
challenged its validity in court with support from the United Party. The Cape Supreme Court upheld the act, but the
Appeal Court upheld the appeal, finding the act invalid because a two-thirds majority in a joint sitting of both
Houses of Parliament was needed in order to change the entrenched clauses of the Constitution. The government
then introduced the High Court of Parliament Bill, which gave parliament the power to overrule decisions of the
court. The Cape Supreme Court and the Appeal Court declared this invalid too. In 1955 the Strijdom government
increased the number of judges in the Appeal Court from five to eleven, and appointed pro-Nationalist judges to fill
the new places. In the same year they introduced the Senate Act, which increased the senate from 49 seats to 89.
Adjustments were made such that the NP controlled 77 of these seats. The parliament met in a joint sitting and
passed the Separate Representation of Voters act in 1956, which removed coloureds from the common voters' roll in
the Cape, and established a separate voters' roll for them.

[edit] Apartheid legislation

Apartheid legislation in South Africa
Precursors
Natives' Land (1913)
Urban Areas (1923)

Prohibition of Mixed Marriages (1949)

Immorality Act† (1950)
Population Registration (1950)
Group Areas Act (1950)
Suppression of Communism (1950)
Bantu Building Workers (1951)
Separate Representation of Voters (1951)
Prevention of Illegal Squatting (1951)
Bantu Authorities (1951)
Natives Laws† (1952)
Pass Laws (1952)
Native Labour (Settlement of Disputes) (1953)
Bantu Education (1953)
Reservation of Separate Amenities (1953)
Natives Resettlement (1954)
Group Areas Development (1955)
Natives (Prohibition of Interdicts) (1956)
Bantu Investment Corporation (1959)
Extension of University Education (1959)
Promotion of Bantu Self-Government (1959)
Coloured Persons Communal Reserves (1961)
Preservation of Coloured Areas (1961)
Urban Bantu Councils (1961)
Terrorism Act (1967)
Bantu Homelands Citizens (1970)

† No new legislation introduced, rather

the existing legislation named was amended.
This box: view • talk • edit
Main article: Apartheid legislation in South Africa

From the 1950s onwards, various laws were passed to keep the races apart and suppress resistance. The Nationalists
argued that South Africa did not comprise a single nation, but was made up of four distinct racial groups, namely
white, black, coloured and Indian. These races were split further into thirteen 'nations' or racial federations. White
people encompassed the English and Afrikaans language groups; the black populace was divided into ten such
groups. This had the result of making the white race the prevalent one.

The principal "apartheid laws" were as follows:[13]

• An amendment to the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 prohibited marriage between persons of
different races.
• An amendment to the Immorality Act of 1950 made sexual relations with a person of a different race a
criminal offence.
• The Population Registration Act of 1950 formalised racial classification and introduced an identity card for
all persons over the age of eighteen, specifying their racial group.
• The Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 banned the South African Communist Party and any other
political party that the government chose to label as 'communist'. It made membership in the SACP
punishable by up to ten years imprisonment.
• The Riotous Assemblies Act of 1956 prohibited disorderly gatherings.
• The Unlawful Organisations Act of 1960 outlawed certain organisation that were deemed threatening to the
government.
• The Sabotage Act was passed 1962, the General Law Amendment Act in 1966, the Terrorism Act in 1967
and the Internal Security Act in 1976.
• The Group Areas Act, passed on 27 April 1950, partitioned the country into different areas, with different
areas allocated to different racial groups. This law was the basis upon which political and social separation
was constructed.
• The Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 created separate government structures for blacks. It was the first piece
of legislation established to support the government's plan of separate development in the Bantustans.
• The Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act of 1951 allowed the government to demolish black shackland slums.
• The Native Building Workers Act and Native Services Levy of 1951 forced white employers to pay for the
construction of housing for black workers recognized as legal residents in 'white' cities.
• The Reservation of Separate Amenities Act of 1953 prohibited people of different races from using the same
public amenities, such as restaurants, public swimming pools, and restrooms.
• The Bantu Education Act of 1953 crafted a separate system of education for African students under the
Department of "Bantu" Education.
• The Bantu Urban Areas Act of 1954 curtailed black migration to cities.
• The Mines and Work Act of 1956 formalised racial discrimination in employment.
• The Promotion of Black Self-Government Act of 1958 entrenched the NP's policy of separate development
and created a system of nominally independent "homelands" for black people.
• Instead of all Native delegate systems founded under the Natives Representative Act of 1936, schemes for
"self–governing Bantu units" were proposed. These national units were to have substantial administrative
powers which would be decentralised to each "Bantu" unit and which would ultimately have autonomy and
the hope of self-government. These national units were identified as North-Sotho, South-Sotho, Tswana,
Zulu, Swazi, Xhosa, Tsonga and Venda. In later years, the Xhosa national unit was broken further down into
the Transkei and Ciskei. The Ndebele national unit was also added later after its "discovery" by the
apartheid government. The government justified its plans on the basis that South Africa was made up of
different "nations", asserting that "(the) government's policy is, therefore, not a policy of discrimination on
the grounds of race or colour, but a policy of differentiation on the ground of nationhood, of different
nations, granting to each self-determination within the borders of their homelands - hence this policy of
separate development".
• The Bantu Investment Corporation Act of 1959 set up a mechanism to transfer capital to the homelands in
order to create employment there.
• The Extension of University Education Act of 1959 created separate universities for blacks, coloureds and
Indians. Under this act, existing universities were not permitted to enroll new black students. Fort Hare
University in the Ciskei (now Eastern Cape) was to register only Xhosa-speaking students. Sotho, Tswana,
Pedi and Venda speakers were placed at the newly-founded University College of the North at Turfloop,
while the University College of Zululand was launched to serve Zulu scholars. Coloureds and Indians were
to have their own establishments in the Cape and Natal respectively.
• The Physical Planning and Utilisation of Resources Act of 1967 allowed the government to stop industrial
development in 'white' cites and redirect such development to homeland border areas.
• The Black Homeland Citizenship Act of 1970 marked a new phase in the Bantustan strategy. It changed the
status of the black so that they were no longer citizens of South Africa, but became citizens of one of the ten
autonomous territories. The aim was to ensure whites became the demographic majority within South Africa
by having all ten Bantustans choose "independence". Not all the homelands chose to become self-governing.
Those who did choose autonomy were the Transkei (1976), Bophuthatswana (1977), Venda (1979) and the
Ciskei (1981).
• The Afrikaans Medium Decree of 1974 required the use of Afrikaans and English on an equal basis in high
schools outside the homelands.[14]
To oversee the apartheid legislation, the bureaucracy expanded, and, by 1977, there were more than half a million
white state employees.

[edit] Unity among white South Africans

Before South Africa became a republic, white politics was typified by the division between the chiefly-Afrikaans
pro-republicans and the largely English anti-republicans, with the legacy of the Boer War still a factor for some
people. Once republican status was attained, Verwoerd called for improved relations and greater accord between
those of British descent and the Afrikaners. He claimed that the only difference now was between those who
supported apartheid and those in opposition to it. The ethnic divide would no longer be between Afrikaans speakers
and English speakers, but rather white and black. Most Afrikaners supported the notion of white unanimity to
ensure their safety. Whites of British descent were divided. Many had voted in opposition to a republic, especially
in Natal, where most votes said "No". Later, however, some of them recognised the perceived need for white unity,
convinced by the growing trend of decolonisation elsewhere in Africa, which left them apprehensive. Harold
Macmillan's "Winds of Change" pronouncement left the British faction feeling that Britain had abandoned them.
The more conservative English-speakers gave support to Verwoerd; others were troubled by the severing of ties
with Britain and remained loyal to the Crown. They were acutely displeased at the choice between British and
South African nationality. Although Verwoerd tried to bond these different blocs, the subsequent ballot illustrated
only a minor swell of support, proving that a great many English speakers remained apathetic and that Verwoerd
had not succeeded in uniting the white populace.

[edit] Apartheid system

The apartheid system is often classified into "grand apartheid" and "petty apartheid". Grand apartheid involved an
attempt to partition South Africa into separate states, while petty apartheid referred to the segregationist dimension.
The National Party clung to grand apartheid until the 1990s, while they abandoned petty apartheid during the 1980s.

[edit] Grand Apartheid, the "homeland" system

Map showing the location of bantustans in South Africa

A rural area in Ciskei, one of the apartheid era "homelands"
Main article: Bantustan

When the NP came into power in 1948, its primary endeavour was to attain a white supremacist Christian National
State and implement racial segregation. The key building blocks to enforcement of racial segregation were

• the arrangement of the population into African, coloured, Indian and white racial groups;
• strict racial segregation in the urban areas;
• restricted African urbanisation;
• a tightly-controlled and more restricted system of migrant labour;
• a stronger accent on tribalism and orthodoxy in African administration than in the past; and
• a drastic strengthening of security legislation and control.

The "Homelands" system was developed on the basis of these tenets. Territorial separation was not a new
institution. There were, for example, the "reserves" created under the British government in the Nineteenth Century.
Under HF Verwoerd's jurisdiction, however, this land was seen as a way to control the increasing movement of
black people into the city. Black people would work in the cities but live in their own areas, where they would be
housed, educated, and vote for their own internal governments. The ultimate plan was to create ten independent
national states out of these homelands.

The state passed two laws which paved the way for "grand apartheid", which was centred on separating races on a
large scale, through spatial divisions; that is, compelling people to live in separate places defined by race. The first
grand apartheid law was the Population Registration Act 30 of 1950, which necessitated all citizens' being
categorised according to race and this being recorded in their identity passes. Official team or Boards were
established to come to an ultimate conclusion on those people whose race was unclear. This caused much difficulty,
especially for coloured people, separating their families as members were allocated different races.

The second pillar of grand apartheid was the Group Areas Act 21 of 1950. Until then, most settlements had people
of different races living side by side. This Act put an end to diverse areas and determined where one lived, how one
survived and how one earned a living by virtue of racial inequality. Each race was allotted its own area, establishing
the base for forced removals in later years.

The policy of separate development came into being with the accession to power of Dr HF Verwoerd in 1958. He
began implementing the homeland structure as a cornerstone of separate development. Verwoerd came to believe in
the granting of "independence" to these homelands. Border industries and the Bantu Investment Corporation, were
established to promote economic development and the provision of employment in the homelands (to draw black
people away from "white" South Africa).

The Tomlinson Commission of 1954 decided that apartheid was justifiable, but stated additional land ought to be
given to the homelands, favouring the development of border industries. In 1958 the Promotion of Black Self-
Government Act was passed, and proponents of apartheid began to argue that, once apartheid had been
implemented, blacks would no longer be citizens of South Africa; they would instead become citizens of the
independent "homelands". In terms of this model, blacks became (foreign) "guest labourers" who merely worked in
South Africa as the holders of temporary work permits.
The South African government attempted to divide South Africa into a number of separate states. Some thirteen per
cent of the land was reserved for black homelands - representing fifty per cent of South Africa's arable land[15]. That
thirteen per cent was divided into ten black "homelands" amongst eight ethnic units. Four of these were given
independence, although this was never recognised by any other country. Each homeland was supposed to develop
into a separate-nation state within which the eight black ethnic groups were to find and grow their separate national
identity, culture and language; Transkei - Xhosa (given "independence"), Ciskei - Xhosa (given "independence" in
1981), Bophuthatswana - Tswana (given "independence"), Venda - Venda (given "independence"); KwaZulu -
Zulu, Lebowa - Pedi, Kangwane - Swazi, QwaQwa - Sotho, Gazankulu - Tsonga, and KwaNdebele - Ndebele. Each
homeland controlled its own education and health system.

Once a homeland was granted its "independence," its designated citizens had their South African citizenship
revoked, replaced with citizenship in their homeland. These people were then issued passports instead of passbooks.
Citizens of the supposedly "autonomous" homelands also had their South African citizenship circumscribed, and so
became less than South African.[16] The South African government attempted to draw an equivalence between their
view of black "citizens" of the "homelands" and the problems which other countries faced through entry of illegal
immigrants.

While other countries were dismantling their discriminatory legislation and becoming more liberal on racial issues,
South Africa continued to construct a labyrinth of legislation promoting racial and ethnic separation. Many white
South Africans supported apartheid because of demographics; that is, separation and partition were seen as a means
of avoiding a one-person-one-vote democracy within a single unified South African state, which would render
whites a politically-powerless minority. In addition, leaders of the above homelands became important defenders of
apartheid, such as Kaiser Matanzima, Bantu Holomisa, Oupa Gqozo, Lucas Mangope and Mangosuthu Buthelezi.

Apartheid placed great emphasis on "self-determination" and "cultural autonomy" for different ethnic groups. For
this reason, "mother-tongue" education was strongly emphasized. Thus, in addition to pouring resources into
developing Afrikaans educational material, resources were also poured into developing school textbooks in black
languages like Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Tswana, and Pedi. As a result, one of the consequences of apartheid was a South
African population literate in black-African languages (a rare thing in Africa where schooling is normally carried
out in colonial languages like English and French).

[edit] Forced removals

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to
reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (May 2007)

During the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, the government implemented a policy of 'resettlement', to force people to
move to their designated "group areas". Some argue that over three and a half million people were forced to resettle
during this period. These removals included people re-located due to slum clearance programmes, labour tenants on
white-owned farms, the inhabitants of the so-called 'black spots', areas of black-owned land surrounded by white
farms, the families of workers living in townships close to the homelands, and 'surplus people' from urban areas,
including thousands of people from the Western Cape (which was declared a 'Coloured Labour Preference Area'[17])
who were moved to the Transkei and Ciskei homelands. The best-publicised forced removals of the 1950s occurred
in Johannesburg, when 60,000 people were moved to the new township of Soweto, an acronym for South Western
Townships.[18][19]

Until 1955 Sophiatown had been one of the few urban areas where blacks were allowed to own land, and was
slowly developing into a multiracial slum. As industry in Johannesburg grew, Sophiatown became the home of a
rapidly expanding black workforce, as it was convenient and close to town. It could also boast the only swimming
pool for black children in Johannesburg.[20] As one of the oldest black settlements in Johannesburg, Sophiatown held
an almost symbolic importance for the 50,000 blacks it contained, both in terms of its sheer vibrancy and its unique
culture. Despite a vigorous ANC protest campaign and worldwide publicity, the removal of Sophiatown began on 9
February 1955 under the Western Areas Removal Scheme. In the early hours, heavily armed police entered
Sophiatown to force residents out of their homes and load their belongings onto government trucks. The residents
were taken to a large tract of land, thirteen miles (19 km) from the city centre, known as Meadowlands (that the
government had purchased in 1953). Meadowlands became part of a new planned black city called Soweto. The
Sophiatown slum was destroyed by bulldozers, and a new white suburb named Triomf (Triumph) was built in its
place. This pattern of forced removal and destruction was to repeat itself over the next few years, and was not
limited to people of African descent. Forced removals from areas like Cato Manor (Mkhumbane) in Durban, and
District Six in Cape Town, where 55,000 coloured and Indian people were forced to move to new townships on the
Cape Flats, were carried out under the Group Areas Act of 1950. Ultimately, nearly 600,000 coloured, Indian and
Chinese people were moved in terms of the Group Areas Act. Some 40,000 white people were also forced to move
when land was transferred from "white South Africa" into the black homelands. Forced removals continue in post-
apartheid South Africa and are being vigorously contested by, amongst others, the shack dwellers' movement
Abahlali baseMjondolo.

[edit] Petty Apartheid

Racial-demographic map of South Africa published by CIA in 1979 with data from the 1970 South African census

The National Party passed a string of legislation which became known as petty apartheid. The first of these was the
Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act 55 of 1949, prohibiting marriage between white people and people of other
races. The Immorality Amendment Act 21 of 1950 (as amended in 1957 by Act 23) forbade "unlawful racial
intercourse" and "any immoral or indecent act" between a white person and an African, Indian or coloured person.

Blacks were not allowed to run businesses or professional practices in those areas designated as "white South
Africa" without a permit. They were supposed to move to the black "homelands" and set up businesses and
practices there. Transport and civil facilities were segregated. Black buses stopped at black bus stops and white
buses at white ones. Trains, hospitals and ambulances were segregated. Because of the smaller numbers of white
patients and the fact that white doctors preferred to work in "white" hospitals, conditions in white hospitals were
much better than those in often overcrowded black hospitals.[21] Blacks were excluded from living or working in
white areas, unless they had a pass — nicknamed the dompas ("dumb pass" in Afrikaans). Only blacks with
"Section 10" rights (those who had migrated to the cities before World War II) were excluded from this provision.
A pass was issued only to a black person with approved work. Spouses and children had to be left behind in black
homelands. A pass was issued for one magisterial district (usually one town) confining the holder to that area only.
Being without a valid pass made a person subject to arrest and trial for being an illegal migrant. This was often
followed by deportation to the person's homeland and prosecution of the employer (for employing an illegal
migrant). Police vans patrolled the "white" areas to round up "illegal" blacks found there without passes. Black
people were not allowed to employ white people in "white South Africa".

Although trade unions for black and "coloured" (mixed race) workers had existed since the early 20th century, it
was not until the 1980s reforms that a mass black trade union movement developed. In the 1970s each black child's
education within the Bantu Education system (the education system practiced in 'black schools' within "white South
Africa") cost the state only a tenth of each white child's. Higher education was provided in separate universities and
colleges after 1959. Eight black universities were created in the homelands; an Indian university built in Durban and
a coloured university built in Cape Town. In addition, each black homeland controlled its own separate education,
health and police system. Blacks were not allowed to buy hard liquor. They were able only to buy state-produced
poor quality beer (although this was relaxed later). Public beaches were racially segregated. Public swimming pools,
some pedestrian bridges, drive-in cinema parking spaces, graveyards, parks, and public toilets were segregated.
Cinemas and theatres in "white areas" were not allowed to admit blacks. There were practically no cinemas in black
areas. Most restaurants and hotels in white areas were not allowed to admit blacks except as staff. Black Africans
were prohibited from attending "white" churches under the Churches Native Laws Amendment Act of 1957. This
was, however, never rigidly enforced, and churches were one of the few places races could mix without the
interference of the law. Blacks earning 360 rand a year, 30 rand a month, or more had to pay taxes while the white
threshold was more than twice as high, at 750 rand a year, 62.5 rand per month. On the other hand, the taxation rate
for whites was considerably higher than that for blacks.

Blacks could never acquire land in white areas. In the homelands, much of the land belonged to a 'tribe', where the
local chieftain would decide how the land had to be utilized. This resulted in white people owning almost all the
industrial and agricultural lands and much of the prized residential land. Most blacks were stripped of their South
African citizenship when the "homelands" became "independent". Thus, they were no longer able to apply for South
African passports. Eligibility requirements for a passport had been difficult for blacks to meet, the government
contending that a passport was a privilege, not a right. As such, the government did not grant many passports to
blacks. Apartheid pervaded South African culture, as well as the law. This was reinforced by much of the media,
and the lack of opportunities for the races to mix in a social setting entrenched social distance between people.

[edit] Coloured classification

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Main article: Coloured

The population was classified into four groups: Black, White, Indian, and Coloured. (These terms are capitalized to
denote their legal definitions in South African law). The Coloured group included people of mixed Bantu, Khoisan,
and European descent (with some Malay ancestry, especially in the Western Cape). The Apartheid bureaucracy
devised complex (and often arbitrary) criteria at the time that the Population Registration Act was implemented to
determine who was Coloured. Minor officials would administer tests to determine if someone should be categorised
either Coloured or Black, or if another person should be categorised either Coloured or White. Different members
of the same family found themselves in different race groups. Further tests determined membership of the various
sub-racial groups of the Coloureds. Many of those who formerly belonged to this racial group are opposed to the
continuing use of the term "coloured" in the post-apartheid era, though the term no longer signifies any legal
meaning. The expressions 'so-called Coloured' (Afrikaans sogenaamde Kleurlinge) and 'brown people' (bruin
mense) acquired a wide usage in the 1980s.
Discriminated against by apartheid, Coloureds were as a matter of state policy forced to live in separate townships
— in some cases leaving homes their families had occupied for generations — and received an inferior education,
though better than that provided to Black South Africans. They played an important role in the struggle against
apartheid: for example the African Political Organisation established in 1902 had an exclusively coloured
membership.

Voting rights were denied to Coloureds in the same way that they were denied to blacks from 1950 to 1983.
However, in 1977 the NP caucus approved proposals to bring coloured and Indians into central government. In
1982, final constitutional proposals produced a referendum among white voters, and the Tricameral Parliament was
approved. The Constitution was reformed the following year to allow the Coloured and Asian minorities
participation in separate Houses in a Tricameral Parliament, and Botha became the first Executive State President.
The theory was that the Coloured minority could be granted voting rights, but the Black majority were to become
citizens of independent homelands. These separate arrangements continued until the abolition of apartheid. The
Tricameral reforms led to the formation of the (anti-apartheid) UDF as a vehicle to try and prevent the co-option of
coloureds and Indians into an alliance with white South Africans. The subsequent battles between the UDF and the
NP government from 1983 to 1989 were to become the most intense period of struggle between left-wing and right-
wing South Africans.

[edit] Women under apartheid

Colonialism and apartheid had a major impact on women since they suffered both racial and gender discrimination.
Oppression against African women was different from discrimination against men. Indeed, they had very few or no
legal rights, no access to education and no right to own property.[22] Jobs were often hard to find but many African
women worked as agricultural or domestic workers though wages were extremely low[23] if not non-existent.
Children suffered from diseases caused by malnutrition and sanitary problems, and mortality rates were therefore
high. The controlled movement of African workers within the country through the Natives Urban Areas Act of 1923
and the pass-laws, separated family members from one another as men usually worked in urban centers, while
women were forced to stay in rural areas. Marriage law and births[24] were also controlled by the government and
the pro-apartheid Dutch Reformed Church, who tried to restrict African birth rates.

[edit] Other minorities

Defining its East Asian population, which is a minority in South Africa but who do not physically appear to belong
any of the four designated groups, was a constant dilemma for the apartheid government. Chinese South Africans
who were descendants of migrant workers who came to work in the gold mines around Johannesburg in the late
19th century, were classified as "Other Asian" and hence "non-white", whereas immigrants from Republic of China
(Taiwan), South Korea and Japan, with which South Africa maintained diplomatic relations, were considered
"honorary whites", thus granted the same privileges as normal whites.

[edit] Internal resistance

Main article: Internal resistance to South African apartheid

Internal resistance to the apartheid system in South Africa came from several sectors of society and saw the creation
of organizations dedicated variously to peaceful protests, passive resistance and armed insurrection.

In 1949 the youth wing of the African National Congress (ANC) took control of the organisation and started
advocating a radical black nationalist programme. The new young leaders proposed that white authority could only
be overthrown through mass campaigns. In 1950 that philosophy saw the launch of the Programme of Action, a
series of strikes, boycotts and civil disobedience actions that led to occasionally violent clashes with the authorities.

In 1959 a group of disenchanted ANC members formed the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), which organised a
demonstration against pass books on 21 March 1960. One of those protests was held in the township of Sharpeville,
where 69 people were killed by police in the Sharpeville massacre.
In the wake of the Sharpeville incident the government declared a state of emergency, More than 18 000 people
were arrested, including leaders of the ANC and PAC, and both organisations were banned. The resistance went
underground, with some leaders in exile abroad and others engaged in campaigns of domestic sabotage and
terrorism.

In May 1961, prior to the declaration of South Africa as a Republic, an assembly representing the banned ANC
called for negotiations between the members of the different ethnic groupings, threatening demonstrations and
strikes during the inauguration of the Republic if their calls were ignored.

When the government overlooked them, the strikers (among the main organizers was a 42-year old, Thembu-origin
man called Nelson Mandela) carried out their threats. The government countered swiftly by giving police the
authority to arrest people for up to twelve days and detaining many strike leaders amid numerous cases of police
brutality.[25] Defeated, the protesters called off their strike. The ANC then chose to launch an armed struggle through
a newly formed military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), which would perform acts of sabotage on tactical state
structures. Its first sabotage plans were carried out on 16 December 1961, the anniversary of the Battle of Blood
River.

In the 1970s the Black Consciousness Movement was created by tertiary students influenced by the American Black
Power movement. BC endorsed black pride and African customs and did much to alter the feelings of inadequacy
instilled among black people by the apartheid system. The leader of the movement, Steve Biko, was taken into
custody on 18 August 1977 and died in detention.

In 1976 secondary students in Soweto took to the streets in the Soweto uprising to protest against forced tuition in
Afrikaans. On 16 June, in what was meant to be a peaceful protest, 23 people were killed. In the following years
several student organisations were formed with the goal of protesting against apartheid, and these organisations
were central to urban school boycotts in 1980 and 1983 as well as rural boycotts in 1985 and 1986.

In parallel to student protests, labour unions started protest action in 1973 and 1974. After 1976 unions and workers
are considered to have played an important role in the struggle against apartheid, filling the gap left by the banning
of political parties. In 1979 black trade unions were legalised and could engage in collective bargaining, although
strikes were still illegal.

At roughly the same time churches and church groups also emerged as pivotal points of resistance. Church leaders
were not immune to prosecution, and certain faith-based organisations were banned, but the clergy generally had
more freedom to criticise the government than militant groups did.

Although the majority of whites supported apartheid, some 20 percent did not support apartheid. Parliamentary
opposition was galvanised by Helen Suzman, Colin Eglin and Harry Schwarz. Extra-parliamentary resistance was
largely centred in the South African Communist Party and women's organisation the Black Sash. Women were also
notable in their involvement in trade union organisations and banned political parties.

[edit] International relations

International opposition
to Apartheid in South Africa

Campaigns
Academic boycott · Sporting boycott
Disinvestment ·Constructive engagement
Instruments and legislation
UN Resolution 1761 (1962)
Crime of Apartheid Convention (1973)
Gleneagles Agreement (1977)
Sullivan Principles (1977)
Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (1986)
 Organisations
Anti-Apartheid Movement
UN Special Committee against Apartheid
Artists United Against Apartheid
Halt All Racist Tours
Organisation of African Unity
Conferences
1964 Conference for Economic Sanctions
1978 World Conference against Racism
United Nations Security Council Resolutions
Resolution 181 · Resolution 191
Resolution 282 · Resolution 418
Resolution 435 · Resolution 591
Other aspects
Elimination of Racism Day
Biko (song) · Activists
Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute
Equity television programming ban
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Main article: Foreign relations of apartheid South Africa

[edit] The Commonwealth

South Africa's policies were subject to international scrutiny in 1960, when British Prime Minister Harold
Macmillan criticised them during his celebrated Wind of Change speech in Cape Town. Weeks later, tensions came
to a head in the Sharpeville Massacre, resulting in more international condemnation. Soon thereafter, Verwoerd
announced a referendum on whether the country should sever links with the British monarchy and become a
republic instead. Verwoerd lowered the voting age for whites to eighteen and included whites in South West Africa
on the voter's roll. The referendum on 5 October that year asked whites, "Do you support a republic for the Union?",
and 52 per cent voted "Yes". As a consequence of this change of status, South Africa needed to reapply for
continued membership of the Commonwealth, with which it had privileged trade links. Even though India became a
republic within the Commonwealth in 1947 it became clear that African and Asian member states would oppose
South Africa due to its apartheid policies. As a result, South Africa withdrew from the Commonwealth on 31 May
1961, the day that the Republic came into existence.

[edit] United Nations

At the first UN gathering in 1946, South Africa was placed on the agenda. The primary subject in question was the
handling of South African Indians, a great cause of divergence between South Africa and India. In 1952, apartheid
was again discussed in the aftermath of the Defiance Campaign, and the UN set up a task team to keep watch on the
progress of apartheid and the racial state of affairs in South Africa. Although South Africa's racial policies were a
cause for concern, most countries in the UN concurred that this was a domestic affair, which fell outside the UN's
jurisdiction.

In April 1960, the UN's conservative stance on apartheid changed following the Sharpeville massacre, and the
Security Council for the first time agreed on concerted action against the apartheid regime, demanding an end to
racial separation and discrimination. From 1960 the ANC began a campaign of armed struggle of which there would
later be a charge of 193 acts of terrorism from 1961-1963, mainly bombings and murders of civilians.

Instead, the South African government then began further suppression, banning the ANC and PAC. In 1961, UN
Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld stopped over in South Africa and subsequently stated that he had been
unable to reach agreement with Prime Minister Verwoerd.

On 6 November 1962, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 1761, condemning South African
apartheid policies. In 1966, the UN held the first[which?] of many colloquiums on apartheid. The General Assembly
announced 21 March as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, in memory of the
Sharpeville massacre.[citation needed] In 1971, the General Assembly formally denounced the institution of homelands,
and a motion[which?] was passed in 1974 to expel South Africa from the UN, but this was vetoed by France, Britain
and the United States of America, all key trade associates of South Africa.[citation needed]

On 7 August 1963 the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 181 calling for a voluntary arms embargo
against South Africa, and in the same year, a Special Committee Against Apartheid was established to encourage
and oversee plans of action against the regime. From 1964, the US and Britain discontinued their arms trade with
South Africa. Yet even traditional enemies of the US were united against apartheid; Che Guevara (a Marxist
revolutionary who was labelled a terrorist by the US despite being part of the Cuban government) condemned the
"brutal policy of apartheid" to the 19th General Assembly of the United Nations and asked "Can the United Nations
do nothing to stop this?". In 1977, the voluntary UN arms embargo became mandatory with the passing of United
Nations Security Council Resolution 418.

Economic sanctions against South Africa were also frequently debated as an effective way of putting pressure on
the apartheid government. In 1962, the UN General Assembly requested that its members sever political, fiscal and
transportation ties with South Africa. In 1968, it proposed ending all cultural, educational and sporting connections
as well. Economic sanctions, however, were not made mandatory, because of opposition from South Africa's main
trading partners.

In 1978 and 1983 the United Nations condemned South Africa at the World Conference Against Racism, and a
significant divestment movement started, pressuring investors to disinvest from South African companies or
companies that did business with South Africa.

After much debate, by the late 1980s the United States, the United Kingdom, and 23 other nations had passed laws
placing various trade sanctions on South Africa.[26] A divestment movement in many countries was similarly
widespread, with individual cities and provinces around the world implementing various laws and local regulations
forbidding registered corporations under their jurisdiction from doing business with South African firms, factories,
or banks.[27]

[edit] Organisation for African Unity

The Organisation for African Unity (OAU) was created in 1963. Its primary objectives were to eradicate
colonialism and improve social, political and economic situations in Africa. It censured apartheid and demanded
sanctions against South Africa. African states agreed to aid the liberation movements in their fight against apartheid.
In 1969, fourteen nations from Central and East Africa gathered in Lusaka, Zambia, and formulated the 'Lusaka
Manifesto', which was signed on 13 April by all of the countries in attendance except Malawi. This manifesto was
later taken on by both the OAU and the United Nations.

The Lusaka Manifesto summarised the political situations of self-governing African countries, condemning racism
and inequity, and calling for black majority rule in all African nations. It did not rebuff South Africa entirely,
though, adopting an appeasing manner towards the apartheid government, and even recognising its autonomy.
Although African leaders supported the emancipation of black South Africans, they preferred this to be attained
through peaceful means. The manifesto's signatories did not support violent opposition to apartheid, because, for
one thing, they could ill afford it and, for another, they dreaded retaliation.[citation needed]

South Africa's negative response to the Lusaka Manifesto and rejection of a change to her policies brought about
another OAU announcement in 1971. The Mogadishu Declaration declared that South Africa's rebuffing of
negotiations meant that her black people could only be freed through military means, and that no African state
should converse with the apartheid government. Henceforth, it would be up to South Africa to keep contact with
other African states.

[edit] Outward-Looking Policy

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(July 2008)
In 1966, BJ Vorster was made South African Prime Minister. He was not prepared to dismantle apartheid, but he
did try to redress South Africa's isolation and to revitalise the country's global reputation, even those with black-
ruled nations in Africa. This he called his "Outward-Looking" policy; the buzzwords for his strategy were
"dialogue" and "détente", signifying a reduction of tension.

Vorster's willingness to talk to African leaders stood in contrast to Verwoerd's refusal to engage with leaders such
as Abubakar Tafawa Balewa of Nigeria in 1962 and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia in 1964. In 1966, Vorster met with
the heads of the neighbouring states of Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana. In 1967, Vorster offered technological
and financial aid to any African state prepared to receive it, asserting that no political strings were attached, aware
that many African states needed financial aid despite their opposition to South Africa's racial policies. Many were
also tied to South Africa economically because of their migrant labour population working on the South African
mines. Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland remained outspoken critics of apartheid, but depended on South Africa's
economic aid.

Malawi was the first country not on South African borders to accept South African aid. In 1967, the two states set
out their political and economic relations, and, in 1969, Malawi became the only country at the assembly which did
not sign the Lusaka Manifesto condemning South Africa' apartheid policy. In 1970, Malawian president Hastings
Banda made his first and most successful official stopover in South Africa.

Associations with Mozambique followed suit and were sustained after that country won its sovereignty in 1975.
Angola was also granted South African loans. Other countries which formed relationships with South Africa were
Liberia, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mauritius, Gabon, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Ghana
and the Central African Republic. Although these states condemned apartheid (more than ever after South Africa's
denunciation of the Lusaka Manifesto), South Africa's economic and military dominance meant that they remained
dependent on South Africa to varying degrees.

[edit] Cultural and sporting isolation

Main article: Sporting boycott of South Africa

South Africa's isolation in sport began in the mid 1950s and increased throughout the 1960s. Apartheid forbade
multiracial sport, which meant that overseas teams, by virtue of their having players of diverse races, could not play
in South Africa. In 1956, the International Table Tennis Federation severed its ties with the all-white South African
Table Tennis Union, preferring the non-racial South African Table Tennis Board. The apartheid government
responded by confiscating the passports of the Board's players so that they were unable to attend international
games.

In 1959, the non-racial South African Sports Association (SASA) was formed to secure the rights of all players on
the global field. After meeting with no success in its endeavours to attain credit by collaborating with white
establishments, SASA approached the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1962, calling for South Africa's
expulsion from the Olympic Games. The IOC sent South Africa a caution to the effect that, if there were no
changes, they would be barred from the 1964 Olympic Games. The changes were initiated, and in January 1963, the
South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee (SANROC) was set up. The Anti-Apartheid Movement persisted in
its campaign for South Africa's exclusion, and the IOC acceded in barring the country from the 1964 Games in
Tokyo. South Africa selected a multi-racial side for the next Games, and the IOC opted for incorporation in the
1968 Games in Mexico. Because of protests from AAMs and African nations, however, the IOC was forced to
retract the invitation.

Foreign complaints about South Africa's bigoted sports brought more isolation. In 1960, Verwoerd barred a Maori
rugby player from touring South Africa with the All Blacks, and the tour was cancelled. New Zealand made a
decision not to convey an authorised rugby team to South Africa again.[citation needed]

B. J. Vorster took Verwoerd's place as PM in 1966 and declared that South Africa would no longer dictate to other
countries what their teams should look like. Although this reopened the gate for sporting meets, it did not signal the
end of South Africa's racist sporting policies. In 1968, Vorster went against his policy by refusing to permit Basil
D'Oliveira, a Coloured South African-born cricketer, to join the English cricket team on its tour to South Africa.
Vorster said that the side had been chosen only to prove a point, and not on merit. After protests, however, "Dolly"
was eventually included in the team. Protests against certain tours brought about the cancellation of a number of
other visits, like that of an England rugby team in 1969/70.

In 1971, Vorster altered his policies even further by distinguishing multiracial from multinational sport. Multiracial
sport, between teams with players of different races, remained outlawed; multinational sport, however, was now
acceptable: international sides would not be subject to South Africa's racial stipulations.

Sporting bans were revoked in 1993, when conciliations for a democratic South Africa were well under way.

In the 1960s, the Anti-Apartheid Movements began to campaign for cultural boycotts of apartheid South Africa.
Artists were requested not to present or let their works be hosted in South Africa. In 1963, 45 British writers put
their signatures to an affirmation approving of the boycott, and, in 1964, American actor Marlon Brando called for a
similar affirmation for films. In 1965, the Writers' Guild of Great Britain called for a proscription on the sending of
films to South Africa. Over sixty American artists signed a statement against apartheid and against professional
links with the state. The presentation of some South African plays in Britain and America was also vetoed. After the
arrival of television in South Africa in 1975, the British Actors Union, Equity, boycotted the service, and no British
programme concerning its associates could be sold to South Africa. Sporting and cultural boycotts did not have the
same impact as economic sanctions, but they did much to lift consciousness amongst normal South Africans of the
global condemnation of apartheid.

[edit] Western influence

While international opposition to apartheid grew, the Nordic countries in particular provided both moral and
financial support for the ANC. On 21 February 1986 – a week before he was murdered – Sweden's prime minister
Olof Palme made the keynote address to the Swedish People's Parliament Against Apartheid held in Stockholm. In
addressing the hundreds of anti-apartheid sympathizers as well as leaders and officials from the ANC and the Anti-
Apartheid Movement such as Oliver Tambo, Palme declared:

"Apartheid cannot be reformed; it has to be eliminated."

Other Western countries adopted a more ambivalent position. In the 1980s, both the Reagan and Thatcher
administrations in the USA and UK followed a 'constructive engagement' policy with the apartheid government,
vetoing the imposition of UN economic sanctions on South Africa, justified by a belief in free trade and a vision of
South Africa as a bastion against Marxist forces in Southern Africa. Thatcher declared the ANC a terrorist
organisation,[28], and in 1987 her spokesman, Bernard Ingham, famously said that anyone who believed that the
ANC would ever form the government of South Africa was "living in cloud cuckoo land".[29]

By the late 1980s, however, with the tide of the Cold War turning and no sign of a political resolution in South
Africa, Western patience with the apartheid government began to run out. By 1989, a bipartisan
Republican/Democratic initiative in the US favoured economic sanctions (realized as the Comprehensive Anti-
Apartheid Act), the release of Nelson Mandela and a negotiated settlement involving the ANC. Thatcher too began
to take a similar line, but insisted on the suspension of the ANC's armed struggle.[30]

Britain's significant economic involvement in South Africa may have provided some leverage with the South
African government, with both the UK and the US applying pressure on the government, and pushing for
negotiations. However, neither Britain nor the US were willing to apply economic pressure upon their multinational
interests in South Africa, such as the mining company Anglo American. Although a high-profile compensation
claim against these companies was thrown out of court in 2004,[31] the US Supreme Court in May 2008 upheld an
appeal court ruling allowing another lawsuit that seeks damages of more than $400 billion from major international
companies which are accused of aiding South Africa's apartheid system.[32]

[edit] South African Border War

Main articles: South African Border War and Angolan civil war
By 1966, SWAPO launched guerilla raids from neighbouring countries against South Africa's occupation of South-
West Africa/Namibia. Initially South Africa fought a counter-insurgency war against SWAPO. This conflict
deepened after Angola gained its independence in 1975 under the communist leadership of the MPLA when South
Africa and the United States sided with the Angolan rival UNITA party. By the end of the 1970s, Cuba had joined
the fray, in one of several late Cold War flashpoints throughout Southern Africa.[33] The Angolan civil war
developed into a conventional war with South Africa and UNITA on one side against the Angolan MPLA
government, the Cubans, the Soviets and SWAPO on the other.

[edit] Total onslaught

By 1980, as international opinion turned decisively against the apartheid regime, the government and much of the
white population increasingly looked upon the country as a bastion besieged by communism and radical black
nationalists. Considerable effort was put into circumventing sanctions, and the government even went so far as to
develop nuclear weapons, allegedly with the help of Israel.[34]

The term "front-line states" referred to countries in Southern Africa geographically near South Africa. Although
these front-line states were all opposed to apartheid, many were economically dependent on South Africa. In 1980,
they formed the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC), the aim of which was to
promote economic development in the region and hence reduce dependence on South Africa. Furthermore, many
SADCC members also allowed the exiled ANC and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) to establish bases in their
countries.

Other African countries also contributed to the fall of apartheid. In 1978, Nigeria boycotted the Commonwealth
Games because New Zealand's sporting contacts with the South African government were not considered to be in
accordance with the 1977 Gleneagles Agreement. Nigeria also led the 32-nation boycott of the 1986
Commonwealth Games because of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher's ambivalent attitude towards sporting
links with South Africa, significantly affecting the quality and profitability of the Games and thus thrusting
apartheid into the international spotlight.[35]

[edit] Cross-border raids

South Africa had a policy of attacking terrorist bases in neighboring countries. These attacks were mainly aimed at
ANC, PAC and SWAPO guerrilla-bases and safe houses in retaliation for acts of terror - like bomb explosions,
massacres and guerrilla actions (like sabotage) by ANC, PAC and Swapo guerrillas in South Africa and Namibia.
The country also aided organisations in surrounding countries who were actively combating the spread of
communism in Southern Africa. The results of these policies included:

• Support for anti-government guerrilla groups such as UNITA in Angola and RENAMO in Mozambique
• South African Defence Force (SADF; now the South African National Defence Force; SANDF) hit-squad
raids into front-line states. Bombing raids were also conducted into neighbouring states.
• A full-scale invasion of Angola: this was partly in support of UNITA, but was also an attempt to strike at
SWAPO bases.
• Targeting of exiled ANC leaders abroad: Joe Slovo's wife Ruth First was killed by a parcel bomb in Maputo,
and 'death squads' of the Civil Co-operation Bureau and the Directorate of Military Intelligence attempted to
carry out assassinations on ANC targets in Brussels, Paris and Stockholm, as well as burglaries and
bombings in London.[citation needed]

In 1984, Mozambican president Samora Machel signed the Nkomati Accord with South Africa's president P.W.
Botha, in an attempt to rebuild Mozambique's economy. South Africa agreed to cease supporting anti-government
forces, while the MK was prohibited from operating in Mozambique. This was a setback for the ANC.

In 1986 President Machel was killed in an air crash in mountainous terrain in South Africa near the Mozambican
border after returning from a meeting in Zambia. South Africa was accused[who?] of continuing its aid to RENAMO
and having caused the accident by using a false radio navigation beacon to lure the aircraft into crashing. This
conspiracy theory was never proven and is still a subject of some controversy, despite the South African Margo
Commission finding that the crash was an accident. A Soviet delegation that did not participate in the investigation
issued a minority report implicating South Africa.

[edit] Conservatism
The National Party government implemented, alongside apartheid, a program of social conservatism. Pornography,
gambling and other such vices were banned. At the same time, it instituted the International Freedom Foundation.
Printed or filmed pornography (of even the mildest variety) was banned and its possession was punishable by
incarceration. Adultery and attempted adultery were also banned (by the Immorality Amendment Act, Act No 23 of
1957).[36]

Television was not introduced until 1975 because it was viewed as dangerous by nationalists. Television was also
run on apartheid lines -- TV1 broadcast in Afrikaans and English (and was geared to a white audience); TV2 in Zulu
and Xhosa (and geared to a black audience); TV3 in Sotho, Tswana and Pedi (and geared to a black audience); and
TV4 mostly showed programmes for an urban-black audience. All TV channels were government-owned and acted
as propaganda agents for apartheid.

Sunday was considered holy. Cinemas, shops selling alcohol and most other businesses were forbidden from
operating on Sundays. Abortion and sex education were also restricted; abortion was legal only in cases of rape or if
the mother's life was threatened.

[edit] State security

During the 1980s the government, led by P.W. Botha, became increasingly preoccupied with security. On the
advice of American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, Botha's government set up a powerful state security
apparatus to "protect" the state against an anticipated upsurge in political violence that the reforms were expected to
trigger. The 1980s became a period of considerable political unrest, with the government becoming increasingly
dominated by Botha's circle of generals and police chiefs (known as securocrats), who managed the various States
of Emergencies.

Botha's years in power were marked also by numerous military interventions in the states bordering South Africa, as
well as an extensive military and political campaign to eliminate SWAPO in Namibia. Within South Africa,
meanwhile, vigorous police action and strict enforcement of security legislation resulted in hundreds of arrests and
bans, and an effective end to the ANC's sabotage campaign.

The government punished political offenders brutally. Between 1982 and 1983, 40,000 people were subjected to
whipping as a form of punishment. The vast majority had committed political offences and were lashed ten times
for their trouble. If convicted of treason, a person could be hanged, and the government executed numerous political
offenders in this way.

[edit] State of emergency

During the last years of apartheid rule in South Africa, the country was more or less in a constant state of
emergency.

Increasing civil unrest and township violence led to the government declaring a State of Emergency on 20 July
1985, giving it the power to deal with resistance to apartheid. More human rights were violated during this period
than ever before. It became a criminal offence to threaten someone verbally or possess documents that the
government perceived to be threatening. It was illegal to advise anyone to stay away from work or oppose the
government. It was illegal, too, to disclose the name of anyone arrested under the State of Emergency until the
government saw fit to release that name. People could face up to ten years' imprisonment for these offences.
However, although the government increased its repressive measures, it was not enough to secure a lasting position
in power.
Then-President P.W. Botha declared the State of Emergency in 36 magisterial districts. Areas affected were the
Eastern Cape, and the PWV region ("Pretoria, Witwatersrand, Vereeniging"). Three months later the Western Cape
was included as well. During this state of emergency about 2,436 people were detained under the Internal Security
Act. This act gave police and the military sweeping powers. The government could implement curfews controlling
the movement of people. The president could rule by decree without referring to the constitution or to parliament.

Four days before the ten-year commemoration of the Soweto uprising, another state of emergency was declared on
12 June 1986 to cover the whole country. The government amended the Public Security Act, expanding its powers
to include the right to declare certain places "unrest areas". This allowed the state to employ extraordinary
measures to crush protests in these areas. Television cameras were banned from entering "unrest areas". The state
broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) provided propaganda in support of the
government. This version of reality was challenged by a range of pro-ANC alternative publications.

In 1989, with the State of Emergency extended to a fourth year, Prime Minister Botha met Mandela and agreed to
work for a peaceful solution to the conflict in the country. Talks commenced with the ANC, prominent business
leaders, the Commonwealth and the Eminent Persons Group.

The state of emergency continued until 1990, when F.W. de Klerk became the State President, and lifted the 30-year
ban on leading anti-apartheid groups the African National Congress, the smaller Pan Africanist Congress and the
South African Communist Party. He also made his first public commitment to release jailed ANC leader Nelson
Mandela, to return to press freedom and to suspend the death penalty.

[edit] Final years of apartheid

This article is written like a personal reflection or essay and may require cleanup. Please help improve it
by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (September 2008)

Serious political violence was a prominent feature of South Africa from 1985 to 1995. There existed a virtual civil
war between the establishment and anti-apartheid forces as the Botha government tried to crush left-wing
organizations which supported ending the apartheid. For four years, police and soldiers patrolled South African
towns. Thousands of people were detained. Deaths mounted on both sides. Many of those detained by the
government were interrogated and tortured. Anti-government activists used the "necklace method" (burning people
alive) to kill Africans suspected of supporting apartheid. The government banned television cameras from filming
"unrest zones".

Government agents assassinated opponents within South Africa and abroad; they undertook cross-border army and
air-force attacks on suspected opposition hide-outs, killing and maiming innocent civilians. The ANC and the PAC
in return exploded bombs at restaurants, shopping centres and government buildings such as magistrates courts,
killing and maiming civilians and government officials. By 1985, it had become the ANC's aim to make black
townships "ungovernable" (a term later replaced by "people's power") by forcing residents to stop paying for
services[citation needed]. The townships duly became the focus areas in the apartheid struggle.
Throughout the 1980s, township people resisted apartheid by acting against the local issues that faced their
particular communities. The focus of much of this resistance was against the local authorities and their leaders, who
were seen to be supporting the government. The fact that they were also the ones responsible for rent collection
merely added to their unpopularity: a common form of township protest was rent boycott. The official governments
of numerous townships were either overthrown or collapsed, to be replaced by unofficial popular organisations,
often led by youth organisations but also involving workers and local residents of all ages. People's courts were set
up, and township residents accused of supporting the government were "put on trial" and dealt extreme (and
occasionally lethal) punishments. Black town councillors and policemen, and sometimes their families, as well as
other residents accused of being government agents, were beaten and occasionally attacked with petrol bombs and
with a method that became known as necklacing. "Necklace" victims were murdered by having a burning tyre
placed around their necks.

Much of this unrest took the ANC by surprise. Its calls to make the townships "ungovernable" were certainly being
heeded. Much of the unrest was directed at the government, but a substantial quantity was between the residents
themselves. Rivalries existed between members of Inkatha and the UDF-ANC faction, and many people died as a
result of this violence. It was later proven that the government manipulated the situation by supporting one side or
the other when it suited it. Between 1984 and 1988, over 4,000 people died as a result of political violence.

In the early 1980s, Botha's National Party government started to recognise the inevitability of the need to reform
apartheid. Early reforms were driven by a combination of internal violence, international condemnation, changes
within the National Party's constituency, and changing demographics — whites constituted only 16% of the total
population, in comparison to 20% fifty years earlier. Botha told white South Africans to "adapt or die" and twice he
wavered on the eve of what were billed as "rubicon" announcements of substantial reforms, although on both
occasions he backed away from substantial changes. In 1983 the so-called Tricameral reforms were introduced,
when a new constitution was introduced to give coloureds and Indians parliamentary representation in their own
national parliamentary chambers and voting rights. (Blacks were not affected: they remained nominal citizens of
their homelands.) Ironically, these reforms served only to trigger intensified political violence through the
remainder of the eighties as more communities and political groups across the country joined the resistance
movement. Between 1986 and 1988, some petty apartheid laws were repealed. Of course, Botha's government
stopped well short of substantial reforms, such as unbanning ANC, PAC and SACP and other liberation
organisations, releasing political prisoners, or repealing the foundation laws of grand apartheid. The government's
stance was that they would not contemplate negotiating until those organisations "renounce violence", a convenient
catchphrase to postpone inevitable engagement with them.

Under the 1983 constitutional changes, parliament was divided along racial lines into three houses - the House of
Assembly (178 members) for whites, the House of Representatives (85 members) for coloureds and the House of
Delegates (45 members) for Indians. On the face of it, this new terminology implied that coloured MPs could be
trusted to represent coloured affairs, while Indian MPs had to be delegated on particular affairs. However, this is not
what was intended: it was merely that the terminology had been ill thought out by the Botha government[citation needed].
Each House handled laws pertaining to its racial group's "own affairs". These included health, education and other
community issues. All laws relating to "general affairs" were handled by a cabinet made up of representatives from
all three houses - although, naturally, the whites had the majority. "General affairs" normally concerned matters
such as defence, industry and taxation, but it was up to the State President, of course, to decide upon what was
"general" and what was not.

In the 1960s South Africa had economic growth second only to that of Japan. Trade with Western countries grew,
and investors from the United States, France and Britain rushed in to get a piece of the action. Resistance among
blacks had been crushed. Since 1964 Mandela, leader of the African Nation Congress, had been in prison on
Robben Island just off the coast from Cape Town, and it appeared that South Africa's security forces could handle
any resistance to apartheid. But in the seventies this rosy picture for South Africa's whites began to fade.

In 1974, resistance to apartheid was encouraged by Portugal's withdrawal from Mozambique and Angola. Portugal
could not afford to continue combating liberation movements in its colonies, which were being aided by the Soviet
Union and China. South African troops withdrew from Angola in early 1976, failing to prevent the liberation forces
from gaining power there, and black students in South Africa celebrated a victory of black liberation over white
resistance.

That same year, South Africa's Nationalist Party passed a law prohibiting instruction in schools to be in any
language but Africkaans and English. In the town of Soweto a student demonstration protesting this move was fired
upon by the police, and a thirteen-year-old student was killed. People in Soweto were outraged and for three days
war existed between the outraged and the police, and the clashes spread to other black townships. Two whites died
and at least 150 blacks, mostly school children. The liberation movement among blacks spread to teachers,
churchmen, et cetera.

In 1978 the defense minister of the Nationalist Party, P.W. Botha, became Prime Minister. Botha's all white regime
was worried about the Soviet Union helping revolutionaries in South Africa, and the economy had turned sluggish.
The new government noted that it was spending too much money trying to maintain the segregated homelands that
had been created for blacks and the homelands were proving to be uneconomic.

Nor was maintaining blacks as a third class working well. The labor of blacks remained vital to the economy, and
illegal black labor unions were flourishing. Many blacks remained too poor to make much of a contribution to the
economy through their purchasing power - although they were more than 70 percent of the population. Capitalism
functioned on goodwill, and it was goodwill that Botha's regime was most concerned - not for the sake of capitalism
so much as it was afraid that an antidote was needed to prevent the blacks from being attracted to Communism.

Concerned over the popularity of Mandela, Botha denounced him as an arch-Marxist committed to violent
revolution, but to appease black opinion and nurture Mandela as a benevolent leader of blacks the government
moved Mandela from Robben Island to a more pleasant prison in a rural area just outside Cape Town, Pollsmoor
prison, where prison life was easier and more pleasant. And the government allowed Mandela more visitors,
including visits and interviews by foreigners - to let the world know that Mandela was being treated well.

To win the hearts and minds of blacks and also to ward off movements in the United States and Europe against
apartheid, a new constitution was created. Black homelands were declared nation-states and pass laws were
abolished. Also, black labor unions were legitimized, the government recognized the right of blacks to live in urban
areas permanently and gave blacks property rights there. Interest was expressed in rescinding the law against
interracial marriage and also rescinding the law against sex between the races, which was under ridicule abroad.
The government committed itself to "separate but equal" education, and the spending for black schools increased, to
one-seventh of white children per child - up from on one-sixteenth in 1968. At the same time, attention was given to
strengthening the effectiveness of the police apparatus.

The anti-apartheid movements in the United States and Europe were gaining support for boycotts against South
Africa, for the withdrawal of U.S. firms from South Africa and for the release of Mandela. South Africa was
becoming an outlaw in the world community of nations. Investing in South Africa by Americans and others was
coming to an end.

In January 1985, Botha addressed the government's House of Assembly and stated that the government was willing
to release Mandela on condition that Mandela pledge opposition to acts of violence to further political objectives.
Mandela's reply was read in public by one of his allies - his first words distributed publicly since his sentence to
prison twenty-one years before. Mandela described violence as the responsibility of the apartheid regime and said
that with democracy there would be no need for violence. The crowd listening to the reading of his speech erupted
in cheers and chants, and Mandela was elevated as the leader of South Africa's blacks.

Botha's effort to win hearts and minds failed. If anything, those other than the white minority were encouraged to
seek more than what was offered by Botha's reforms. Doing otherwise, many believed, would make them dupes.
The campaign to overthrow apartheid escalated, with African National Congress leaders in exile calling for
consumer boycotts, rent strikes and people's war to make townships ungovernable. Violence increased, and rage
was vented on black policemen and township officials regarded as government stooges. Other black-on-black
violence erupted, between the followers of the opportunistic Zulu chieftain Buthelezi and supporters of the African
National Congress.
Botha blamed the violence in the townships on Communist agitators and the foreign media. His government
declared a state of emergency. The police were ordered to move against "troublemakers," and special attention was
given to student leaders. People were rounded up, and, out of sight of the public, prisoners were tortured and beaten,
and some were killed slowly with rat poison in their food - events later documented. In 1989, 4,000 deaths were
reported, mostly blacks.

By 1987 the growth of South Africa's economy had dropped to among the lowest rate in the world, and the ban on
South African participation in international sporting events was frustrating many whites in South Africa. Examples
of African states with black leaders and white minorities existed in Kenya and Zimbabwe. Whispers of South Africa
one day having a black President sent more hardline whites into Rightist parties. Mandela was moved to a four-
bedroom house of his own, with a swimming pool and shaded by fir trees, on a prison farm just outside Cape Town.
He had an unpublicized meeting with Botha, Botha impressing Mandela by walking forward, extending his hand
and pouring Mandela's tea. And the two had a friendly discussion, Mandela comparing the African National
Conference's rebellion with that of the Afrikaaner rebellion, and about everyone being brothers.

In August 1989 Botha retired and was replaced by a member of the National Party who had solid conservative
credentials: Frederik W. de Klerk. For the sake of making South Africa a functioning nation again, De Klerk moved
toward the one development that would appease blacks: giving them a voice in the politics of the nation. In 1991,
the government repealed apartheid laws and in March 1992 a referendum was held on de Klerk's policy. Rightists
made noises in protest, but with an 85 percent turnout of voters, de Klerk's government received a 70 percent vote
of approval.

The way was open now for South Africa's first non-racial democratic election, which was held on April 27, 1994,
with some Rightist whites and conservative black officials in the homelands looking with disfavor upon the event.
The African National Congress won 63 percent of the nearly 20 million votes cast. The National Party received 20
percent. Buthelezi's party, the Inkatha Freedom Party, won 10 percent of the vote, and the white, Rightist, Freedom
Front won but 2 percent. In the new parliament, 252 of its 400 seats went to members of the African National
Congress. On May 10, 1994, Mandela was sworn in as South Africa's president, and his cabinet was diverse: with
17 of its members from the African National Congress, 10 from the National Party and 10 from Buthelezi's party.

The communism that some in South Africa had feared failed to develop when the "arch-Marxist" Mandela and the
African National Congress came to power. The policy of the new government was that blacks and whites had to live
together in a nation of laws with rights for all. They saw no Darwinian struggle between the races as had many at
the beginning of the century. Mandela and his colleagues were more advanced than the whites had been.

A commission was established for reconciliation, the aim being to give amnesty for crimes committed if people
admitted to their misdeeds. What mattered most to people whose family members had been murdered by the
apartheid regime was that they had the bones of the murdered so that they could give their murdered people a decent
burial.

As the 1980s progressed, more and more anti-apartheid organizations were formed and affiliated with the UDF. Led
by the Reverend Allan Boesak and Albertina Sisulu, the UDF called for the government to abandon its reforms and
instead abolish apartheid and eliminate the homelands completely.

Many Indians and coloureds also rejected the Tricameral system. Their lives did not improve with the introduction
of the system and they still endured a battery of apartheid legislation. The first Tricameral elections were largely
boycotted and there was widespread rioting.

Blacks saw the new constitution as an insult to them and their struggle. Although they made up the majority of the
population, they still found themselves, even after constitutional reforms, totally excluded from any real form of
political representation. Rioting died down much sooner in the Indian and coloured areas than the black areas.

While these widespread protests were taking place, the ANC launched a series of violent attacks on the government,
whose attempt to garner support among the non-white populace with the new constitution failed miserably.
International pressure also increased as economic sanctions began to impact the value of the rand, which all but
collapsed. In 1985, the government declared a State of Emergency which was to stay in effect for the next five
years. An increasing number of organisations were banned or listed (restricted in some way); many individuals had
restrictions such as house arrest imposed on them. Detention without trial became a common feature of the
government's reaction to growing civil unrest and by 1988, 30,000 people had been detained. Severe censorship of
the press became a dominant tactic in the government's strategy and television cameras were banned from "unrest
areas". Media opposition to the system increased, supported by the growth of a pro-ANC underground press within
South Africa.

In 1987, the State of Emergency was extended for another two years. A number of clandestine meetings were held
between the ANC-in-exile and various sectors of the internal struggle, such as women and educationalists. More
overtly, a group of white intellectuals met the ANC in Senegal for talks. Meanwhile, about 200,000 members of the
National Union of Mineworkers commenced the longest strike (three weeks) in South African history. Violence
increased between the UDF and INKATHA supporters. 1988 saw the banning of the activities of the UDF and other
anti-apartheid organisations.

International pressure on Botha's government continued to grow as the US and UK actively promoted a negotiated
settlement with the black majority. Minor reforms gradually increased in number and magnitude. Early in 1989,
however, Botha suffered a stroke; he was prevailed upon to resign on 13 February 1989 and was succeeded as
president later that year by FW de Klerk. As international pressure grew, so too did internal unrest and by this time
the state's security forces were finding it harder and harder to contain the civil unrest and keep it away from high-
profile city centres and out of the world's media view. In his opening address to parliament in February 1990, in
what has come to be known as the "unbanning speech", de Klerk announced that he would repeal discriminatory
laws and lift the ban on the ANC, the UDF, the PAC, and the Communist Party of South Africa (SACP). The Land
Act was brought to an end. Media restrictions were lifted and De Klerk released political prisoners not guilty of
common-law crimes.

On 11 February 1990, 27 years after he had first been incarcerated, Nelson Mandela walked out of the grounds of
Victor Verster Prison as a free man, immediately calling for an even more determined effort against apartheid and
affirming his commitment to a peaceful and disciplined process. His release provoked unbridled joy and excitement
throughout the country and had a major and nigh-universal effect. Mandela had refused to be released until all the
other political prisoners were let out and the ANC and other such organisations unbanned.

Having been instructed by the UN Security Council to end its long-standing military occupation in South-West
Africa /Namibia, and in the face of military defeats and the growing cost of its war of occupation there, South
Africa had had to relinquish control of this territory; Namibia officially became an independent state on 21 March
1990.

[edit] Negotiations
Main article: Negotiations to end apartheid in South Africa

From 1990 to 1991, the legal apparatus of apartheid was abolished. In 1990 negotiations were earnestly begun, with
two meetings between the government and the ANC. The purpose of the negotiations was to pave the way for talks
towards a peaceful transition of power. These meetings were successful in laying down the preconditions for
negotiations - despite the considerable tensions still abounding within the country.

At the first meeting, the NP and ANC discussed the conditions for negotiations to begin. The meeting was held at
Groote Schuur, the President's official residence. They released the Groote Schuur Minute which said that before
negotiations commenced political prisoners would be freed and all exiles allowed to return.

There were fears that the change of power in South Africa would be violent. To avoid this, it was essential that a
peaceful resolution between all parties be reached. In December 1991, the Convention for a Democratic South
Africa (CODESA) began negotiations on the formation of a multiracial transitional government and a new
constitution extending political rights to all groups. CODESA adopted a Declaration of Intent and committed itself
to an "undivided South Africa". Although the talks broke down several times, they were eventually successful in
getting the ANC and NP to reach an agreement.

Most of the persistent violence through the country was due to impatience for change on the part of those still living
under repression, and also the intense rivalry between the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the ANC. Political
violence exploded across the country, and, although Mandela and Buthelezi met to settle their differences, they
could not stem the tide of violence, creating more distrust between the two factions. One of the worst cases of ANC-
IFP violence was the Boipatong massacre of 17 June 1992, when 200 IFP militants attacked the Gauteng township
of Boipatong. 45 people met their end. Witnesses said that the men had arrived in police vehicles, supporting claims
that elements within the police and army contributed to the general violence. There have also been claims that high-
ranking government officials and politicians ordered or at least condoned these massacres. When De Klerk tried to
visit the scene of the incident, he was driven away by angry crowds, on whom the police opened fire, killing thirty.

The Bisho massacre also added seriously to mounting tensions between the ANC and NP. It started off as an ANC
march in protest against the leader of the Ciskei homeland, but 29 people were killed and 200 injured when the
police opened fire as the marchers broke through their barriers. This marked something of a "last straw" for the
already-strained CODESA process and the talks faltered at this stage. The CP, meanwhile, not having taken part in
CODESA, challenged the government to a general election so that white voters could decide on the future of South
Africa. De Klerk responded by holding the last whites-only referendum in March 1992 to decide whether or not
negotiations should continue. A 68-percent majority gave its support, and the victory instilled in De Klerk and the
government a lot more confidence, giving the NP a stronger position in negotiations.

Thus, when negotiations resumed later in 1992, under the tag of CODESA II, stronger demands were made. The
ANC and the government could not reach a compromise on how power should be shared during the transition to
democracy. The NP wanted to retain a strong position in a transitional government, as well as the power to change
decisions made by parliament. A background of escalating violence added to the tensions. Mandela argued that de
Klerk, as head of state, was responsible for bringing an end to the bloodshed. He also accused the South African
police of inciting the ANC-IFP violence. This formed the basis for ANC's withdrawal from the negoatiations, and
the CODESA forum broke down completely at this stage.

During this transitional period, in addition to the continuing "black-on-black" violence, there were a number of
attacks on white civilians by the PAC's army, the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA). The PAC was hoping
to strengthen their standing by attracting the support of the angry, impatient youth. In one such attack, members of
the APLA entered a Cape Town church and opened fire, killing and wounding members of the congregation.

Right-wing violence also added to the hostilities of this period. The assassination of Chris Hani threatened to derail
talks altogether. Hani, the popular general secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP), was
assassinated in 1993 in Dawn Park in Johannesburg by Janusz Walus, an anti-communist Polish refugee who had
close links to the white nationalist AWB. Hani enjoyed widespread support beyond his constituency in the SACP
and ANC and had been recognised as the most likely successor to Mandela; his death brought forth protests
throughout the country and across the international community. Soon afterwards, the AWB used an armoured
vehicle to crash through the doors of the World Trade Centre where talks were still going ahead under the
Negotiating Council. Even this failed to derail the process. Although final agreements were not directly attained
from CODESA I or II, it was as a result of their foundations that further, lower-profile talks could be pursued and a
peaceful resolution agreed upon.

Violence persisted right through to the 1994 elections. Lucas Mangope, leader of the Bophuthatswana homeland,
declared that it would not take part in the elections. It had been decided that, once the temporary constitution had
come into effect, the homelands would be incorporated into South Africa, but Mangope did not want this to happen.
There were strong protests against his decision, and he eventually backed down. This did not, however, bring a halt
to the right-wing violence as several militants came to Mangope's aid. Three of them were killed, and harrowing
images were shown on national television and in newspapers across the world.

Two days before the elections, a car bomb exploded in Johannesburg, killing nine.[37][38] The day before the
elections, another one went off, injuring thirteen. Finally, though, at midnight on 26–27 April 1994, the old flag was
lowered, and the old (now co-official) national anthem Die Stem ("The Call") was sung, followed by the raising of
the new rainbow flag and singing of the other co-official anthem, Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika ("God Bless Africa"). The
election went off peacefully amidst a palpable feeling of goodwill throughout the country. International observers
agreed that the elections were free and fair.

20,000,000 South Africans turned up to cast their votes. There was some difficulty in organising the voting in rural
areas, but, throughout the country, people waited patiently for many hours in order to vote. An extra day was added
to give everyone the chance. People had two votes to cast - one for a National Government and another for a
Provincial Government. As part of the new governmental structure, each province - there were now nine - was
given a degree of political power. This meant that not all decisions were made by the national government.

The ANC won 62.65% of the vote,[39][40] less than the 66.7% that would have allowed it to rewrite the constitution.
As well as deciding the national government, the election decided the provincial governments, and the ANC won in
all but two provinces. The NP captured most of the white and coloured votes and became the official opposition
party. The Government of National Unity was established, its cabinet made up of twelve ANC representatives, six
from the NP and three from the IFP. Thabo Mbeki and FW De Klerk were made deputy presidents, and Nelson
Mandela became South Africa's first democratically-elected president. The ANC won seven provinces, the NP the
Western Cape and the IFP Natal.

Since then, 27 April is celebrated as a public holiday in South Africa known as Freedom Day.

In 1993, de Klerk and Mandela were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for their work for the peaceful
termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa".[41]

The Cold War was the state of conflict, tension and competition that existed between the United States and
the Soviet Union and their respective allies from the mid-1940s to the early 1990s. Throughout this period, rivalry
between the two superpowers was expressed through military coalitions, propaganda, espionage, weapons
development, industrial advances, and competitive technological development, which included the space race. Both
superpowers engaged in costly defence spending, a massive conventional and nuclear arms race, and numerous
proxy wars.

Although the US and the Soviet Union were allied against the Axis powers during World War II, the two states
disagreed sharply both during and after the conflict on many topics, particularly over the shape of the post-war
world. The war had either exhausted or eliminated the pre-war "Great Powers" leaving the US and USSR as clear
economic, technological and political superpowers. In this bipolar world, countries were prompted to align
themselves with one or the other of the superpower blocs (a Non-Aligned Movement would emerge later, during the
1960s).

The suppressed rivalry during the war quickly became aggravated first in Europe, then in every region of the world,
as the US sought the "containment" and "rollback" of communism and forged myriad alliances to this end,
particularly in Western Europe and the Middle East. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union fostered Communist
revolutionary movements around the world, particularly in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia.

The Cold War period saw both periods of heightened tension and relative calm. On the one hand, international
crises such as the Berlin Blockade (1948–1949), the Korean War (1950–1953), the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the
Vietnam War (1959–1975), the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979–1989), and especially the 1962 Cuban Missile
Crisis raised fears of a Third World War. The last such crisis moment occurred during NATO exercises in
November 1983. However, there were also periods of reduced tension as both sides sought détente. Direct military
attacks on adversaries were deterred by the potential for mutual assured destruction using deliverable nuclear
weapons.
The Cold War drew to a close in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. With the coming to office of US President
Ronald Reagan, the US increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressure on the Soviet Union, which was
already suffering from severe economic stagnation. In the second half of the 1980s, newly appointed Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the perestroika and glasnost reforms. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, leaving
the United States as the sole superpower in a unipolar world.

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Origins of the term

• 2 History
o 2.1 Background
o 2.2 World War II and post-war (1939–47)
o 2.3 "Containment" through the Korean War (1947–53)
 2.3.1 Europe
 2.3.2 Asia
o 2.4 Crisis and escalation (1953–62)
o 2.5 Confrontation through détente (1962–79)
o 2.6 "Second Cold War" (1979–85)
o 2.7 End of the Cold War (1985–91)
• 3 Legacy
o 3.1 Historiography
• 4 See also
• 5 Footnotes
• 6 References
• 7 Further reading

• 8 External links

Origins of the term

The first use of the term "Cold War" to describe post-World War II geopolitical tensions between the Soviet Union
and the US has been attributed to American financier and US presidential advisor Bernard Baruch.[1] In South
Carolina on April 16, 1947, Baruch gave a speech written by journalist Herbert Bayard Swope,[2] in which he said,
"Let us not be deceived: we are today in the midst of a cold war".[3] Columnist Walter Lippmann also gave the term
wide currency, with the publication of his 1947 book titled Cold War.[4]

History
Background
Main article: Origins of the Cold War
Further information: Red Scare

American troops in Vladivostok, August 1918, during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War
There is disagreement among historians regarding the starting point of the Cold War. While most historians trace its
origins to the period immediately following World War II, others argue that it began towards the end of World War
I, though tensions between the Russian Empire and the British Empire and the United States date back to the middle
of the 19th century.[5] The ideological clash between communism and capitalism began in 1917 following the
October Revolution, when Russia emerged as the world's first communist nation. This outcome rendered Russian–
American relations a matter of major long-term concern for leaders in both countries.[5]

Several events fueled suspicion and distrust between the United States and the Soviet Union: the Bolsheviks'
challenge to capitalism[6] (by presenting a socialist alternative to the people of capitalist countries and by advocating
violent revolution in "capitalist" countries), Russia's withdrawal from World War I in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
with Germany, the US invasion of Russia in support of the White Army in the Russian Civil War, and the US
refusal to recognize the Soviet Union until 1933.[7] Other events in the interwar period deepened this climate of
mutual distrust.[7] The Treaty of Rapallo and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact are two notable examples.[8]

World War II and post-war (1939–47)

During their joint war effort, which began in 1941, the Soviets strongly suspected that the British and the Americans
had conspired to allow the Russians to bear the brunt of the battle against Nazi Germany. According to this view,
the Western Allies had joined the conflict at the last moment in order to influence the peace settlement and
dominate Europe.[9] Thus, Soviet perceptions of the West and vice versa left a strong undercurrent of tension and
hostility between the Allied powers.[10]

The "Big Three" at the Yalta Conference, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin

The Allies disagreed about how the European map should look, and how borders would be drawn, following the
war.[11] Both sides, moreover, held very dissimilar ideas regarding the establishment and maintenance of post-war
security.[11] The American concept of security assumed that, if US-style governments and markets were established
as widely as possible, countries could resolve their differences peacefully, through international organizations.[12]
The Soviet model of security depended on the integrity of that country's own borders.[13] This reasoning was
conditioned by Russia's historical experiences, given the frequency with which the country had been invaded from
the West over the previous 150 years.[14] The immense damage inflicted upon the USSR by the German invasion
was unprecedented both in terms of death toll (est. 27 million) and the extent of destruction.[15] Moscow was
committed to ensuring that the new order in Europe would guarantee Soviet security for the long term and sought to
eliminate the chance of a hostile government reappearing along the USSR's western border by controlling the
internal affairs of these countries.[11] Poland was a particularly thorny issue. In April 1945, both Churchill and the
new American President, Harry S. Truman, protested the Soviets' decision to prop up the Lublin government, the
Soviet-controlled rival to the Polish government-in-exile, whose relations with the Soviets were severed.[16]

At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Allies attempted to define the framework for a post-war settlement in
Europe but failed to reach a firm consensus.[17] Following the Allied victory in May, the Soviets effectively
occupied Eastern Europe,[17] while strong US and Western allied forces remained in Western Europe. In occupied
Germany, the US and the Soviet Union established zones of occupation and a loose framework for four-power
control with the fading French and British.[18] For the maintenance of world peace, the Allies set up the United
Nations, but the enforcement capacity of its Security Council was effectively paralyzed by the superpowers' use of
the veto.[19] The UN was essentially converted into an inactive forum for exchanging polemical rhetoric, and the
Soviets regarded it almost exclusively as a propaganda tribune.[20]
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was concerned that given the enormous size of Soviet forces deployed in
Europe at the end of the war, and the perception that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was unreliable, there existed a
Soviet threat to Western Europe.[21] In April-May 1945, the British War Cabinet's Joint Planning Staff Committee
developed Operation Unthinkable, a plan "to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British
Empire".[22] The plan, however, was rejected by the British Chiefs of Staff Committee as militarily unfeasible.[21]

Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin meeting at the Potsdam Conference on July 18, 1945

At the Potsdam Conference, starting in late July, serious differences emerged over the future development of
Germany and Eastern Europe.[23] Moreover, the participants' mounting antipathy and bellicose language served to
confirm their suspicions about each other's hostile intentions and entrench their positions.[24] At this conference
Truman informed Stalin that the United States possessed a powerful new weapon.[25] Stalin was aware that the
Americans were working on the atomic bomb and, given that the Soviets' own rival program was in place, he
reacted to the news calmly. The Soviet leader said he was pleased by the news and expressed the hope that the
weapon would be used against Japan.[25] One week after the end of the Potsdam Conference, the US bombed
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Shortly after the attacks, Stalin protested to US officials when Truman offered the Soviets
little real influence in occupied Japan.[26]

In February 1946, George F. Kennan's "Long Telegram" from Moscow helped to articulate the US government's
increasingly hard line against the Soviets, and became the basis for US strategy toward the Soviet Union for the
duration of the Cold War.[27] That September, the Soviet side produced the Novikov telegram, sent by the Soviet
ambassador to the US but commissioned and "co-authored" by Vyacheslav Molotov; it portrayed the US as being in
the grip of monopoly capital building up military capability "to prepare the conditions for winning world supremacy
in a new war".[28] On September 6, 1946, James F. Byrnes delivered a speech in Germany repudiating the
Morgenthau Plan (a proposal to partition and deindustrialize post-war Germany) and warning the Soviets that the
US intended to maintain a military presence in Europe indefinitely.[29] As Byrnes admitted a month later, "The nub
of our program was to win the German people [...] it was a battle between us and Russia over minds [...]"[30] A few
weeks after the release of this "Long Telegram", former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his
famous "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton, Missouri.[31] The speech called for an Anglo-American alliance against the
Soviets, whom he accused of establishing an "iron curtain" from "Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic".[32]
[33]

"Containment" through the Korean War (1947–53)

Main article: Cold War (1947–1953)

By 1947, US president Harry S. Truman's advisors urged him to take immediate steps to counter the influence of the
Soviet Union, citing Stalin's efforts (amid postwar confusion and collapse) to undermine the US by encouraging
rivalries among capitalists that could precipitate another war.[34] In Asia, the Red Army had overrun Manchuria in
the last month of the war, and went on to occupy the large swath of Korean territory located north of the 38th
parallel.[35] In the Chinese Civil War, Mao Zedong's Communists, though receiving minimal Soviet support,
defeated the pro-Western and US-supported Nationalists.[36]
Europe

President Truman signs the National Security Act Amendment of 1949 with guests in the Oval Office.

The USSR was setting up puppet communist regimes in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and
East Germany, as the Red Army maintained a military presence in most of these countries.[33] In February 1947, the
British government announced that it could no longer afford to finance the Greek monarchical military regime in its
civil war against communist-led insurgents. The American government's response to this announcement was the
adoption of "containment",[37] the goal of which was to stop the spread of communism. Truman gave a speech to call
for spending $400 million on intervention in the war and unveil the Truman Doctrine, which framed the conflict as
a contest between "free" peoples and "totalitarian" regimes.[37] Even though the insurgents were helped by Josip
Broz Tito's Yugoslavia,[7] US policymakers accused the Soviet Union of conspiring against the Greek royalists in an
effort to "expand" Soviet influence.[38]

Map of Cold-War era Europe and the Near East showing countries that received Marshall Plan aid. The red columns
show the relative amount of total aid per nation.

For US policymakers, threats to Europe's balance of power were not necessarily military ones, but political and
economic challenges.[33] In June 1947, the Truman Doctrine was complemented by the Marshall Plan, a pledge of
economic assistance aimed at rebuilding the Western political-economic system and countering perceived threats to
Europe's balance of power; such threats included attempts by communist parties to seize power through free
elections or popular revolutions, in countries like France or Italy.[39]

Stalin saw the Marshall Plan as a significant threat to Soviet control of Eastern Europe. He believed that economic
integration with the West would allow Eastern Bloc countries to escape Soviet guidance, and that the US was trying
to "buy" a pro-US re-alignment of Europe.[40] Stalin therefore prevented Eastern Bloc nations from receiving
Marshall Plan aid.[40] The Soviet Union's alternative to the Marshall plan, which was purported to involve Soviet
subsidies and trade with eastern Europe, became known as the Molotov Plan, institutionalized in January 1949 as
the Comecon.[7] Stalin was also fearful of a reconstituted Germany, as his vision of a post-war Germany did not
include the ability to rearm or pose any kind of threat to the Soviet Union.[41]

In 1948, in retaliation for Western efforts to re-industrialize and rebuild the German economy, Stalin built
blockades which prevented Western materials and supplies from arriving in West Berlin.[42] This move, known as
the Berlin Blockade, precipitated one of the first major crises of the Cold War. Both sides directed propaganda
against the other, with the Soviets mounting a public relations campaign against the US policy change, and the US
accidentally creating "Operation Little Vittles", which supplied candy to German children. The Berlin Blockade
ended peacefully, with Stalin backing down and allowing the resumption of normal shipments to West Berlin.[43]
C-47s unloading at Tempelhof Airport in Berlin during the Berlin Blockade.

European economic alliances

European military alliances

In July 1947, Truman rescinded the punitive Morgenthau Plan (part of an agreement with the Soviet Union
regarding post-war Germany), which had specifically directed US occupation forces in Germany not to assist in
Germany's economic rehabilitation efforts. It was replaced by a new directive which stressed instead that European
prosperity was contingent upon German economic recovery.[44] The National Security Act of 1947, signed by
Truman on July 26, created a unified Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the
National Security Council. These would become the main bureaucracies for US policy in the Cold War.[45] Around
this time, both sides in the conflict saw a proliferation of intelligence and espionage activities—infiltration,
defection, spy planes and satellites, expulsion of diplomats and smuggled documents would all play a role in the
ensuing decades.[46]

The twin policies of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan led to billions in economic and military aid to
Western Europe, and Greece and Turkey. With US assistance, the Greek military won its civil war,[45] and the Italian
Christian Democrats defeated the powerful Communist-Socialist alliance in the elections of 1948.[47] Two months
earlier, an alarmed Stalin had actively contributed to a plan by Czechoslovak communists to seize power in the only
Eastern European state that had retained a democratic government, which in turn guaranteed quick Congressional
approval of Marshall aid.[48]

In the US, the enunciation of the Truman Doctrine marked the beginning of a bipartisan defense and foreign policy
consensus between Republicans and Democrats, focused on containment and deterrence; this weakened during and
after the Vietnam War but ultimately held steady.[49][50] Social democrats in Europe, not to mention moderate and
conservative parties, gave virtually unconditional support to the Western alliance,[51] but Communists there and in
the US, paid by the KGB and involved in its intelligence operations,[52] adhered to Moscow's line, although dissent
began to appear after 1956. Other critiques of consensus politics came from anti-Vietnam War activists, the CND
and the nuclear freeze movement.[53]

In September 1947, the Soviets created Cominform, the purpose of which was to enforce orthodoxy within the
international communist movement and tighten political control over Soviet satellites through coordination of
communist parties in the Eastern Bloc.[40] Cominform faced an embarrassing setback the following June, when the
Tito–Stalin split obliged its members to expel Yugoslavia, which remained Communist but adopted a neutral stance
in the Cold War.[54]

As part of the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, the NKVD, led by Lavrentiy Beria, supervised the
establishment of Soviet-style systems of secret police in the Eastern European states, which were supposed to crush
anti-communist resistance.[43] When the slightest stirrings of independence emerged among East European satellites,
Stalin's strategy was to deal with those responsible in the same manner he had handled his prewar rivals within the
Soviet Union: they were removed from power, put on trial, imprisoned, and in several instances, executed.[55]

The US formally allied itself to the Western European states in the North Atlantic Treaty of April 1949, establishing
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).[43] That August, Stalin ordered the detonation of the first Soviet
atomic device.[7]

Additionally, the US spearheaded the establishment of West Germany from the three Western zones of occupation
in May 1949.[23] To counter this Western reorganisation of Germany, the Soviet Union proclaimed its zone of
occupation in Germany the German Democratic Republic that October.[23] In the early 1950s, the US worked for the
rearmament of West Germany and, in 1955, secured its full membership in NATO.[23] In May 1953, Beria, by then
in a government post, had made an unsuccessful proposal to allow the reunification of a neutral Germany to prevent
West Germany's incorporation into NATO.[56]

A major propaganda effort begun in 1949 was Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which was dedicated to bringing
about the peaceful demise of the Communist system and the governments of what were known as the satellite
nations (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria).[57] Radio Free Europe attempted to fulfill these
goals by serving as a surrogate home radio station, an alternative to the controlled and party-dominated domestic
press.[57] RFE was a product of some of the most prominent architects of America's early Cold War strategy,
especially those who believed that the Cold War would eventually be fought by political rather than military means,
such as George F. Kennan.[58] American policymakers, including Kennan and John Foster Dulles, acknowledged
that the Cold War was in its essence a war of ideas.[58] The United States, acting through the CIA, funded a long list
of projects to counter the Communist appeal among intellectuals in Europe and the developing world.[59]

Asia

In 1949, Mao's Red Army defeated the US-backed Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalist Government in China, and the
Soviet Union promptly created an alliance with the newly-formed People's Republic of China.[60] Confronted with
the Chinese Revolution and the end of the US atomic monopoly in 1949, the Truman administration quickly moved
to escalate and expand the containment policy.[7] In NSC-68, a secret 1950 document,[61] the National Security
Council proposed to reinforce pro-Western alliance systems and quadruple spending on defence.[7]

US officials moved thereafter to expand "containment" into Asia, Africa, and Latin America, in order to counter
revolutionary nationalist movements, often led by Communist parties financed by the USSR, fighting against the
restoration of Europe's colonial empires in South-East Asia and elsewhere.[62] In the early 1950s, the US formalized
a series of alliances with Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and the Philippines (notably ANZUS and
SEATO), thereby guaranteeing the United States a number of long-term military bases.[23]

One of the more significant impacts of containment was the outbreak of the Korean War. As noted, the US and the
Soviet Union had been fighting proxy wars on a small scale and without their respective troops; but to Stalin's
surprise, Truman committed US forces to drive back the North Koreans, who had invaded South Korea;[7] this
action was backed by the UN Security Council only because the Soviets were then boycotting meetings to protest
the fact that Taiwan and not Communist China held a permanent seat there.[63]

Among other effects, the Korean War galvanised NATO to develop a military structure,[64] as all communist
countries were suspected of acting together. Public opinion in countries that were usually American allies, such as
Great Britain, was divided for and against the war. British Attorney General Sir Hartley Shawcross repudiated the
sentiment of those opposed when he said:[65]

I know there are some who think that the horror and devastation of a world war now would be so frightful, whoever
won, and the damage to civilization so lasting, that it would be better to submit to Communist domination. I
understand that view–but I reject it.

Even though the Chinese and North Koreans were exhausted by the war and were prepared to end it by late 1952,
Stalin insisted that they continue fighting, and a cease-fire was approved only in July 1953, after Stalin's death.[23]

Crisis and escalation (1953–62)

Main article: Cold War (1953–1962)

In 1953, changes in political leadership on both sides shifted the dynamic of the Cold War.[45] Dwight D.
Eisenhower was inaugurated president in January 1953. During the last 18 months of the Truman administration,
the US defence budget had quadrupled, and Eisenhower resolved to reduce military spending by brandishing the
United States' nuclear superiority while continuing to fight the Cold War effectively.[7] In March, as Joseph Stalin
died, Nikita Khrushchev soon became the dominant leader of the USSR, having deposed and executed Lavrentiy
Beria, and pushed aside his other two rivals Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov. On February 25, 1956,
Khruschev shocked delegates to the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party by cataloguing and denouncing
Stalin's crimes.[66] He declared that the only way to reform and move away from Stalin's policies would be to
acknowledge errors made in the past.[45]

On November 18, 1956, while addressing Western ambassadors at a reception at the Polish embassy in Moscow,
Khrushchev used his famous "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you" expression,
shocking everyone present.[67] However, he had not been talking about nuclear war, he later claimed, but rather
about the historically determined victory of communism over capitalism.[68] He then declared in 1961 that even if
the USSR might indeed be behind the West, within a decade its housing shortage would disappear, consumer goods
would be abundant, its population would be "materially provided for", and within two decades, the Soviet Union
"would rise to such a great height that, by comparison, the main capitalist countries will remain far below and well
behind".[69]

Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, initiated a "New Look" for the "containment" strategy, calling
for a greater reliance on nuclear weapons against US enemies in wartime.[45] Dulles also enunciated the doctrine of
"massive retaliation", threatening a severe US response to any Soviet aggression. Possessing nuclear superiority, for
example, Eisenhower curtailed Soviet threats to intervene in the Middle East during the 1956 Suez Crisis.[7]

Map of the Warsaw Pact countries

There was a slight relaxation of tensions after Stalin's death in 1953, but the situation in Europe remained an uneasy
armed truce.[70] US troops seemed stationed indefinitely in West Germany and Soviet forces seemed indefinitely
stationed throughout Eastern Europe. To counter West German rearmament and admission into NATO, the Soviets
established a formal alliance with the Eastern European Communist states called the Warsaw Treaty Organization
or Warsaw Pact in 1955;[23] this was more a political than a defence measure, as the USSR already had a network of
mutual assistance treaties with all its allies in Eastern Europe by the time NATO was set up in 1949.[71] In 1956, the
status quo was briefly threatened in Hungary, when the Soviets invaded rather than allow the Hungarians to move
out of their orbit, which started after Khrushchev arranged the removal from power of Hungary's Stalinist leader,
Mátyás Rákosi.[72] Berlin remained divided and contested.[73]

From 1957 through 1961, Khrushchev openly and repeatedly threatened the West with nuclear annihilation. He
claimed that Soviet missile capabilities were far superior to those of the United States, capable of wiping out any
American or European city. However, Khrushchev rejected Stalin's belief in the inevitability of war, and declared
his new goal was to be "peaceful coexistence".[74] This formulation modified the Stalin-era Soviet stance, where
international class struggle meant the two opposing camps were on an inevitable collision course where
Communism would triumph through global war; now, peace would allow capitalism to collapse on its own,[75] as
well as giving the Soviets time to boost their military capabilities.[76] Only with Gorbachev's "new thinking" was this
vision relaxed and peaceful coexistence seen as an end in itself rather than a form of class struggle.[77] US
pronouncements concentrated on American strength abroad and the success of liberal capitalism.[78] However, by
the late 1960s, the "battle for men's minds" between two systems of social organization that Kennedy spoke of in
1961 was largely over, with tensions henceforth based primarily on clashing geopolitical objectives rather than
ideology.[79]

During November 1958, Khrushchev made an unsuccessful attempt to turn all of Berlin into an independent,
demilitarized "free city", giving the United States, Great Britain, and France a six-month ultimatum to withdraw
their troops from the sectors they still occupied in West Berlin, or he would transfer control of Western access rights
to the East Germans. Khrushchev earlier explained to Mao, using a startling anatomical metaphor, that "Berlin is the
testicles of the West. Every time I want to make the West scream, I squeeze on Berlin".[80] NATO formally rejected
the ultimatum in mid-December and Khrushchev withdrew it in return for a Geneva conference on the German
question.[81]

More broadly, one hallmark of the 1950s was the beginning of European integration–a fundamental by-product of
the Cold War that Truman and Eisenhower promoted politically, economically, and militarily, but which later
administrations viewed ambivalently, fearful that an independent Europe would launch a separate détente with the
Soviet Union, which would use this to exacerbate Western disunity.[82]

Nationalist movements in some countries and regions, notably Guatemala, Iran, the Philippines, and Indochina were
often allied with communist groups—or at least were perceived in the West to be allied with communists.[45] In this
context, the US and the Soviet Union increasingly competed for influence by proxy in the Third World as
decolonization gained momentum in the 1950s and early 1960s;[83] additionally, the Soviets saw continuing losses
by imperial powers as presaging the eventual victory of their ideology.[84] The US government utilized the CIA in
order to remove a string of unfriendly Third World governments and to support others.[45] The US used the CIA to
overthrow governments suspected by Washington of turning pro-Soviet, including Iran's first democratically elected
government under Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq in 1953 (see 1953 Iranian coup d'état) and Guatemala's
democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in 1954 (see 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état).[61] Between
1954 and 1961, the US sent economic aid and military advisors to stem the collapse of South Vietnam's pro-
Western regime.[7] Both sides used propaganda to advance their cause: the United States Information Agency was
set up to create support for US foreign policy, aided by its radio division, Voice of America; the BBC did its part
too. The CIA spread covert propaganda against US-hostile governments (including Eastern Bloc ones), also
providing funds to establish Radio Free Europe, which was frequently jammed. The Chinese and the Soviets waged
an intra-Communist propaganda war after their split.[85] Soviet propaganda used Marxist philosophy to attack
capitalism, claiming labor exploitation and war-mongering imperialism were inherent in the system.[86]

Many emerging nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America rejected the pressure to choose sides in the East-West
competition. In 1955, at the Bandung Conference in Indonesia, dozens of Third World governments resolved to stay
out of the Cold War.[87] The consensus reached at Bandung culminated with the creation of the Non-Aligned
Movement in 1961.[45] Meanwhile, Khrushchev broadened Moscow's policy to establish ties with India and other
key neutral states. Independence movements in the Third World transformed the postwar order into a more
pluralistic world of decolonized African and Middle Eastern nations and of rising nationalism in Asia and Latin
America.[7]

Charting the Space Race in context of Sputnik and other nuclear threats. Frank Borman stated, "the Apollo program
was just a battle in the Cold War".[88]

On the nuclear weapons front, the US and the USSR pursued nuclear rearmament and developed long-range
weapons with which they could strike the territory of the other.[23] In August 1957, the Soviets successfully launched
the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile[89] (ICBM) and, in October, launched the first earth satellite,
Sputnik.[90] The launch of Sputnik inaugurated the Space Race. This culminated in the Apollo Moon landings, which
Frank Borman described as "just a battle in the Cold War"[91] with superior spaceflight rockets indicating superior
ICBMs. However, the period after 1956 was marked by serious setbacks for the Soviet Union, most notably the
breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance. Mao had defended Stalin when Khrushchev attacked him in 1956, and
treated the new Soviet leader as a superficial upstart, accusing him of having lost his revolutionary edge.[92] After
this, Khrushchev made many desperate attempts to reconstitute the Sino-Soviet alliance, but Mao considered it
useless and denied any proposal.[92] Further on, the Soviets focused on a bitter rivalry with Mao's China for
leadership of the global communist movement,[93] and the two clashed militarily in 1969.[94]

Soviet tanks face US tanks at Checkpoint Charlie, on 27 October, during the Berlin Crisis of 1961

The Berlin Crisis of 1961 was the last major incident in the Cold War regarding the status of Berlin and post-World
War II Germany. Provoked by a new ultimatum issued by the Soviet Union demanding the withdrawal of allied
forces from West Berlin,[95] it culminated in the erection of the Berlin Wall and de facto partition of Berlin.[96]

The nuclear arms race brought the two superpowers to the brink of nuclear war. Khrushchev formed an alliance
with Fidel Castro after the Cuban Revolution in 1959.[97] In 1962, President John F. Kennedy responded to the
installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba with a naval blockade. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world closer to
nuclear war than ever before in the history of the Cold War.[98] It also showed that neither superpower was prepared
to use nuclear weapons for fear of the other's retaliation, and thus of mutually assured destruction.[99] The aftermath
of the crisis led to the first efforts at nuclear disarmament and improving relations,[70] though the Cold War's first
arms control agreement, the Antarctic Treaty, had come into force in 1961.[100]

In 1964, Khrushchev's Kremlin colleagues managed to oust him, but allowed him a peaceful retirement.[101] Accused
of rudeness and incompetence, he was also credited with ruining Soviet agriculture and bringing the world to the
brink of nuclear war.[101] Khrushchev had become an international embarrassment when he authorised construction
of the Berlin Wall, a public humiliation for Marxism-Leninism.[101]
Confrontation through détente (1962–79)
Main article: Cold War (1962–1979)
File:Buzz salutes the US Flag.jpg
The United States reached the moon in 1969—a symbolic milestone in the space race.

United States Navy F-4 Phantom II intercepts a Soviet Tupolev Tu-95 D aircraft in the early 1970s

In the course of the 1960s and '70s, both the US and the Soviet Union struggled to adjust to a new, more
complicated pattern of international relations in which the world was no longer divided into two clearly opposed
blocs.[45] From the beginning of the postwar period, Western Europe and Japan rapidly recovered from the
destruction of World War II and sustained strong economic growth through the 1950s and '60s, increasing their
strength compared to the United States.[45] As a result of the 1973 oil crisis, combined with the growing influence of
Third World alignments such as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the Non-Aligned
Movement, less-powerful countries had more room to assert their independence and often showed themselves
resistant to pressure from either superpower.[62] Moscow, meanwhile, was forced to turn its attention inward to deal
with the Soviet Union's deep-seated domestic economic problems.[45] During this period, Soviet leaders such as
Alexey Kosygin and Leonid Brezhnev embraced the notion of détente.[45]

Nevertheless, both superpowers resolved to reinforce their global leadership. Both the United States and the Soviet
Union struggled to stave off challenges to their leadership in their own regions. President Lyndon B. Johnson
landed 22,000 troops in the Dominican Republic in Operation Power Pack, citing the threat of the emergence of a
Cuban-style revolution in Latin America.[7] Western Europe remained dependent on the US for its defence, a status
most vociferously contested by France's Charles de Gaulle, who in 1966 withdrew from NATO's military structures
and expelled NATO troops from French soil.[102]

In 1968, the Soviets, together with most of their Warsaw Pact allies, invaded Czechoslovakia,[103] and then crushed
the Prague Spring reform movement, which had threatened to take the country out of the Warsaw Pact.[104] The
invasion sparked intense protests from Yugoslavia, Romania and China, and from Western European communist
parties.[105] Later that year, during a speech at the Fifth Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party, Brezhnev
outlined the Brezhnev Doctrine, in which he claimed the right to violate the sovereignty of any country attempting
to replace Marxism-Leninism with capitalism. During the speech, Brezhnev stated:[104]

When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it
becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries.

The reasons for adopting such a doctrine had to do with the failures of Marxism-Leninism in states like Poland,
Hungary and East Germany, which were facing a declining standard of living, in contrast with the prosperity of
West Germany and the rest of Western Europe.[106]

Brezhnev and Nixon during Brezhnev's June 1973 visit to Washington; this marked a high-water mark in détente
between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The US continued to spend heavily on supporting friendly Third World regimes in Asia. Conflicts in peripheral
regions and client states—most prominently in Vietnam—continued.[107] Johnson stationed 575,000 troops in
Southeast Asia to defeat the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) and their North Vietnamese
allies in the Vietnam War, but his costly policy weakened the US economy and, by 1975, ultimately culminated in
what most of the world saw as a humiliating defeat of the world's more powerful superpower at the hands of one of
the world's poorest nations.[7] Additionally, Operation Condor, employed by South American dictators to suppress
leftist dissent, was backed by the US, which (sometimes accurately) perceived Soviet or Cuban support behind these
opposition movements.[108] Brezhnev, meanwhile, faced far more daunting challenges in reviving the Soviet
economy, which was declining in part because of heavy military expenditures.[7] Moreover, the Middle East
continued to be a source of contention. Egypt, which received the bulk of its arms and economic assistance from the
USSR, was a troublesome client, with a reluctant Soviet Union feeling obliged to assist in both the Six-Day War
(with advisers and technicians) and the War of Attrition (with pilots and aircraft) against US ally Israel;[109] Syria
and Iraq later received increased assistance as well as (indirectly) the PLO.[110] During the Yom Kippur War, rumors
of imminent Soviet intervention on the Egyptians' behalf brought about a massive US mobilization that threatened
to wreck détente;[111] this escalation, the USSR's first in a regional conflict central to US interests, inaugurated a new
and more turbulent stage of Third World military activism and made use of the new Soviet strategic parity.[112]

Although indirect conflict between Cold War powers continued through the late 1960s and early 1970s, tensions
began to ease as the period of détente began.[70] The Chinese had sought improved relations with the US in order to
gain advantage over the Soviets. In February 1972, Richard Nixon traveled to Beijing and met with Mao Zedong
and Zhou Enlai. Nixon and Henry Kissinger then announced a stunning rapprochement with Mao's China.[113] A
desire by the USSR to contain China fear of conflict on both its European and Asian fronts, and a renewed sense of
encirclement by adversaries was one factor leading to the Soviet-US détente. Its other two principal causes were the
USSR's having achieved rough nuclear parity with the US and the serious weakening the Vietnam War was causing
the United States (a reduction of influence in the Third World and a cooling of relations with Western Europe).[114]

Leonid Brezhnev and Jimmy Carter sign SALT II treaty, June 18, 1979, in Vienna.

Later, in May, Nixon and Kissinger met with Soviet leaders in Moscow,[115] and announced the first of the Strategic
Arms Limitation Talks, aimed at limiting the development of costly antiballistic missiles and offensive nuclear
missiles.[45] Between 1972 and 1974, the two sides also agreed to strengthen their economic ties.[7] Meanwhile, these
developments coincided with the "Ostpolitik" of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt.[105] Other agreements were
concluded to stabilize the situation in Europe, culminating in the Helsinki Accords signed at the Conference on
Security and Co-operation in Europe in 1975.[116]

However, the détente of the 1970s was short-lived. The KGB, led by Yuri Andropov, continued to persecute
distinguished Soviet personalities such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov, who were criticising the
Soviet leadership in harsh terms.[117] Indirect conflict between the superpowers continued through this period of
détente in the Third World, particularly during political crises in the Middle East, Chile, Ethiopia and Angola.[118]
While President Jimmy Carter tried to place another limit on the arms race with a SALT II agreement in 1979,[119]
his efforts were undercut by the other events that year, including the Iranian Revolution and the Nicaraguan
Revolution, which both ousted pro-US regimes, and his retaliation against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in
December.[7]

"Second Cold War" (1979–85)

Main article: Cold War (1979–1985)
 Further information: Soviet war in Afghanistan, 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, Invasion of
Grenada, United States bombing of Libya, and Iran-Contra

The term second Cold War has been used by some historians to refer to the period of intensive reawakening of Cold
War tensions and conflicts in the early 1980s. Tensions greatly increased between the major powers with both sides
becoming more militaristic.[6]

During December 1979, about 75,000 Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in order to support the Marxist
government formed by ex-Prime-minister Nur Muhammad Taraki, assassinated that September by one of his party
rivals.[120] As a result, US President Jimmy Carter withdrew the SALT II treaty from the Senate, imposed embargoes
on grain and technology shipments to the USSR, demanded a significant increase in military spending and further
announced that the United States would boycott the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics. He described the Soviet
intervention in Afghanistan as "the most serious threat to the peace since the Second World War".[121]

This map shows the two essential global spheres during the Cold War in 1980–the US in blue and the USSR in red.
Consult the legend on the map for more details.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in the US presidential election, vowing to increase military
spending and confront the Soviets everywhere.[122] Both Reagan and Britain's new prime minister, Margaret
Thatcher, denounced the Soviet Union and its ideology in terms that rivaled those of the worst days of the Cold War
in the late 1940s, with Reagan vowing to leave the "evil empire" on the "ash heap of history".[123] Pope John Paul II
provided a moral focus for anti-communism; a visit to his native Poland in 1979 stimulated a religious and
nationalist resurgence centered on the Solidarity movement that galvanized opposition and may have led to his
attempted assassination two years later.[124] Reagan also imposed economic sanctions on Poland to protest the
suppression of Solidarity.[125] In response, Mikhail Suslov, the Kremlin's top ideologist, advised Soviet leaders not to
intervene if Poland fell under the control of Solidarity, as it may have led to heavy economic sanctions, representing
a catastrophe for the Soviet economy.[125]

With the background of a buildup in tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States, and the deployment
of Soviet RSD-10 Pioneer ballistic missiles targeting Western Europe, NATO decided, under the impetus of the
Carter presidency, to deploy MGM-31 Pershing and cruise missiles in Europe, primarily West Germany.[126] This
deployment would have placed missiles just 10 minutes' striking distance from Moscow.[127] Yet support for the
deployment was wavering and many doubted whether the push for deployment could be sustained. But on
September 1, 1983, the Soviet Union shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a Boeing 747 with 269 people aboard,
including sitting congressman Larry McDonald

Larry McDonald

, when it violated Soviet airspace just past the west coast of Sakhalin Island—an act which Reagan characterized as
a "massacre". This act increased support for the deployment, overseen by Reagan, which stood in place until the
later accords between Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.[128] The Able Archer 83 exercise in November 1983, a
realistic simulation of a coordinated NATO nuclear release, has been called most dangerous moment since the
Cuban Missile Crisis, as the Soviet leadership keeping a close watch on it considered a nuclear attack as imminent.
[129]

In November 1982 American ten year old Samantha Smith wrote a letter to Yuri Andropov expressing her fear of
nuclear war, and pleading with him to work toward peace. Andropov gave her a personal invitation to visit the
USSR. Smith's visit was one of few prominent attempts to improve relations between the superpowers during
Andropov's brief leadership from 1982–84 at a low point in US-Soviet relations.

Moscow had built up a military that consumed as much as 25 percent of the Soviet Union's gross national product at
the expense of consumer goods and investment in civilian sectors.[130] Soviet spending on the arms race and other
Cold War commitments both caused and exacerbated deep-seated structural problems in the Soviet system, which
saw at least a decade of economic stagnation during the late Brezhnev years. Soviet investment in the defence sector
was not driven by military necessity, but in large part by the interests of massive party and state bureaucracies
dependent on the sector for their own power and privileges.[131] The Soviet Armed Forces became the largest in the
world in terms of the numbers and types of weapons they possessed, in the number of troops in their ranks, and in
the sheer size of their military–industrial base.[132] However, the quantitative advantages held by the Soviet military
often concealed areas where the Eastern bloc dramatically lagged behind the West.[133]

By the early 1980s, the USSR had built up a military arsenal and army surpassing that of the United States.
Previously, the US had relied on the qualitative superiority of its weapons, but the gap had been narrowed.[134]
Ronald Reagan began massively building up the United States military not long after taking office. This led to the
largest peacetime defence buildup in United States history.[135] Tensions continued intensifying in the early 1980s
when Reagan revived the B-1 Lancer program that was canceled by the Carter administration, produced LGM-118
Peacekeepers,[136] installed US cruise missiles in Europe, and announced his experimental Strategic Defence
Initiative, dubbed "Star Wars" by the media, a defence program to shoot down missiles in mid-flight.[137]

After Reagan's military buildup, the Soviet Union did not respond by further building its military[138] because the
enormous military expenses, along with inefficient planned manufacturing and collectivized agriculture, were
already a heavy burden for the Soviet economy.[139] At the same time, Reagan persuaded Saudi Arabia to increase
oil production,[140] even as other non-OPEC nations were increasing production.[141] These developments contributed
to the 1980s oil glut, which affected the Soviet Union, as oil was the main source of Soviet export revenues.[139][130]
The decrease in oil prices and large military expenditures gradually brought the Soviet economy to stagnation.[139]
US and USSR/Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles, 1945–2006

US domestic public concerns about intervening in foreign conflicts persisted from the end of the Vietnam War.[142]
The Reagan administration emphasized the use of quick, low-cost counter-insurgency tactics to intervene in foreign
conflicts.[142] In 1983, the Reagan administration intervened in the multisided Lebanese Civil War, invaded Grenada,
bombed Libya and backed the Central American Contras, anti-communist paramilitaries seeking to overthrow the
Soviet-aligned Sandinista government in Nicaragua.[62] While Reagan's interventions against Grenada and Libya
were popular in the US, his backing of the Contra rebels was mired in controversy.[143]

Meanwhile, the Soviets incurred high costs for their own foreign interventions. Although Brezhnev was convinced
in 1979 that the Soviet war in Afghanistan would be brief, Muslim guerrillas, aided by the US and other countries,
waged a fierce resistance against the invasion.[144] The Kremlin sent nearly 100,000 troops to support its puppet
regime in Afghanistan, leading many outside observers to dub the war "the Soviets' Vietnam".[144] However,
Moscow's quagmire in Afghanistan was far more disastrous for the Soviets than Vietnam had been for the
Americans because the conflict coincided with a period of internal decay and domestic crisis in the Soviet system.
A senior US State Department official predicted such an outcome as early as 1980, positing that the invasion
resulted in part from a "domestic crisis within the Soviet system. ... It may be that the thermodynamic law of
entropy has ... caught up with the Soviet system, which now seems to expend more energy on simply maintaining
its equilibrium than on improving itself. We could be seeing a period of foreign movement at a time of internal
decay".[145][146] The Soviets were not helped by their aged and sclerotic leadership either: Brezhnev, virtually
incapacitated in his last years, was succeeded by Andropov and Chernenko, neither of whom lasted long. After
Chernenko's death, Reagan was asked why he had not negotiated with Soviet leaders. Reagan quipped, "They keep
dying on me".[147]

End of the Cold War (1985–91)

Main article: Cold War (1985–1991)
Further information: Economy of the Soviet Union

Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan sign the INF Treaty at the White House, 1987

By the time the comparatively youthful Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary in 1985,[123] the Soviet
economy was stagnant and faced a sharp fall in foreign currency earnings as a result of the downward slide in oil
prices in the 1980s.[148] These issues prompted Gorbachev to investigate measures to revive the ailing state.[148] An
inneffectual start led to the conclusion that deeper structural changes were necessary and in June 1987 Gorbachev
announced an agenda of economic reform called perestroika, or restructuring.[149] Perestroika relaxed the production
quota system, allowed private ownership of businesses and paved the way for foreign investment. These measures
were intended to redirect the country's resources from costly Cold War military commitments to more profitable
areas in the civilian sector.[149] Despite initial scepticism in the West, the new Soviet leader proved to be committed
to reversing the Soviet Union's deteriorating economic condition instead of continuing the arms race with the West.
[150][70]
Partly as a way to fight off internal opposition from party cliques to his reforms, Gorbachev simultaneously
introduced glasnost, or openness, which increased freedom of the press and the transparency of state institutions.[151]
Glasnost was intended to reduce the corruption at the top of the Communist Party and moderate the abuse of power
in the Central Committee.[152] Glasnost also enabled increased contact between Soviet citizens and the western
world, particularly with the United States, contributing to the accelerating détente between the two nations.[153]

In response to the Kremlin's military and political concessions, Reagan agreed to renew talks on economic issues
and the scaling-back of the arms race.[154] The first was held in November 1985 in Geneva, Switzerland.[154] At one
stage the two men, accompanied only by a translator, agreed in principle to reduce each country's nuclear arsenal by
50 percent.[155]

Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988

The second summit was held the following year in Reykjavík, Iceland. Talks went well until the focus shifted to
Reagan's proposed Strategic Defence Initiative, which Gorbachev wanted eliminated: Reagan refused.[156] The
negotiations failed, but the third summit in 1987 led to a breakthrough with the signing of the Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). The INF treaty eliminated all nuclear-armed, ground-launched ballistic and cruise
missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (300 to 3,400 miles) and their infrastructure.[157] East–West
tensions rapidly subsided through the mid-to-late 1980s, culminating with the final summit in Moscow in 1989,
when Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush signed the START I arms control treaty.[158] During the following year it
became apparent to the Soviets that oil and gas subsidies, along with the cost of maintaining massive troops levels,
represented a substantial economic drain.[159] In addition, the security advantage of a buffer zone was recognised as
irrelevant and the Soviets officially declared that they would no longer intervene in the affairs of allied states in
Eastern Europe.[160] In 1989, Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan[161] and by 1990 Gorbachev consented to
German reunification,[159] the only alternative being a Tiananmen scenario.[162] When the Berlin Wall came down,
Gorbachev's "Common European Home" concept began to take shape.[163]

By 1989, the Soviet alliance system was on the brink of collapse, and, deprived of Soviet military support, the
Communist leaders of the Warsaw Pact states were losing power.[161] In the USSR itself, glasnost weakened the
bonds that held the Soviet Union together[160] and by February 1990, with the dissolution of the USSR looming, the
Communist Party was forced to surrender its 73-year-old monopoly on state power.[164]

At the same time freedom of press and dissent allowed by glasnost and the festering "nationalities question"
increasingly led the Union's component republics to declare their autonomy from Moscow, with the Baltic states
withdrawing from the Union entirely.[165] The 1989 revolutionary wave that swept across Central and Eastern
Europe overthrew the Soviet-style communist states, such as Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria,[166]
Romania being the only Eastern-bloc country to topple its communist regime violently and execute its head of state.
[167]
Gorbachev's permissive attitude toward Eastern Europe did not initially extend to Soviet territory; even Bush,
who strove to maintain friendly relations, condemned the January 1991 killings in Latvia and Lithuania, privately
warning that economic ties would be frozen if the violence continued.[168] The USSR was fatally weakened by a
failed coup and as a growing number of Soviet republics, particularly Russia, threatened to secede the USSR was
declared officially dissolved on December 25, 1991.[169]

Two years earlier, in December 1989, Gorbachev and Reagan's successor, George H. W. Bush, had declared the
Cold War over at the Malta Summit;[170] a year later, the two former rivals were partners in the Gulf War against
longtime Soviet ally Iraq.[171]

Legacy
The four decades of the Cold War carried a tremendous cost, as military expenditures by the US in this period is
estimated to have been $8 trillion and nearly 100,000 Americans lost their lives in Korea and Vietnam.[172] Although
the loss of life among Soviet soldiers is difficult to estimate, as a share of their gross national product the financial
cost for the Soviets was even higher.[173] In addition to the loss of life by uniformed soldiers, millions died in the
superpowers' proxy wars around the globe, most notably in Southeast Asia.[174]

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the post-Cold War world is widely considered as unipolar, with the
United States as the sole remaining superpower.[175][176][177][178][179] In the words of Samuel P. Huntington,[180]

The United States, of course, is the sole state with preeminence in every domain of power–economic, military,
diplomatic, ideological, technological, and cultural–with the reach and capabilities to promote its interests in
virtually every part of the world.

Formation of the CIS, the official end of the Soviet Union

Created on 21 December 1991, the Commonwealth of Independent States is viewed as a successor entity to the
Soviet Union but according to Russia's leaders its purpose was to "allow a civilized divorce" between the Soviet
Republics and is comparable to a loose confederation.[181]

Following the Cold War, Russia cut military spendings dramatically, but the adjustment was wrenching, as the
military-industrial sector had previously employed one of every five Soviet adults[182] and its dismantling left
millions throughout the former Soviet Union unemployed.[182] After Russia embarked on capitalist economic
reforms in the 1990s it suffered a financial crisis and a recession more severe than the US and Germany had
experienced in the Great Depression.[183] Russian living standards have worsened overall in the post-Cold War years,
although the economy has resumed growth since 1999.[183]

The legacy of the Cold War continues to influence world affairs.[6] The Cold War defined the political role of the
United States in the post-World War II world: by 1989 the US held military alliances with 50 countries and had
1.5 million troops posted abroad in 117 countries.[184] The Cold War also institutionalized a global commitment to
huge, permanent peacetime military-industrial complexes and large-scale military funding of science.[184]

Most of the proxy wars and subsidizing local conflicts ended along with the Cold War; the occurrence of interstate
wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, as well as refugee and displaced persons crises has declined sharply in recent
years.[185] However, the legacy of Cold War conflict is not always easily erased, as many of the economic and social
tensions that were exploited to fuel Cold War competition in parts of the Third World remain acute.[6] The
breakdown of state control in a number of areas formerly ruled by Communist governments has produced new civil
and ethnic conflicts, particularly in the former Yugoslavia.[6] In Eastern Europe, the end of the Cold War has
ushered in an era of economic growth and a large increase in the number of liberal democracies, while in other
countries such as Afghanistan independence was accompanied by state failure.[6]

Historiography
Main article: Historiography of the Cold War

As soon as the term "Cold War" was popularized to refer to postwar tensions between the United States and the
Soviet Union, interpreting the course and origins of the conflict has been a source of heated controversy among
historians, political scientists, and journalists.[186] In particular, historians have sharply disagreed as to who was
responsible for the breakdown of Soviet–US relations after the Second World War; and whether the conflict
between the two superpowers was inevitable, or could have been avoided.[187] Historians have also disagreed on
what exactly the Cold War was, what the sources of the conflict were, and how to disentangle patterns of action and
reaction between the two sides.[6]

While the explanations of the origins of the conflict in academic discussions are complex and diverse, several
general schools of thought on the subject can be identified. Historians commonly speak of three differing
approaches to the study of the Cold War: "orthodox" accounts, "revisionism", and "post-revisionism".[184]

This "orthodox" accounts place the responsibility for the Cold War on the Soviet Union and its expansion into
Eastern Europe.[184] "Revisionist" writers placed more responsibility for the breakdown of postwar peace on the
United States, citing a range of US efforts to isolate and confront the Soviet Union well before the end of World
War II.[184] "Post-revisionists" saw the events in the Cold War as more nuanced, and attempted to be more balanced
in determining what occurred during the Cold War.[184] Much of the historiography on the Cold War weaves
together two or even all three of these broad categories.[23]

A Burnt-Out Case
(1960) is a novel by English author Graham Greene.

[edit] Plot summary

The plot concerns Querry, a world-famous architect, who is the victim of a terrible attack of indifference, he no
longer finds meaning in art or pleasure in life. Arriving anonymously at a Congo leper village, he is diagnosed - by
Dr Colin, the resident doctor - as the mental equivalent of a 'burnt-out case', a leper who has gone through a stage of
mutilation - see quotation below. However, Querry loses himself in working for the lepers, his disease of mind
slowly approaches a cure. Then the white community finds out who Querry is...

'Perhaps Querry is also a patient,' Colin said.

'That's nonsense. I was thinking of the lepers - you have always dreamt of a school for rehabilitation, haven't
you, if you could get the funds. For those poor burnt-out cases of yours.'
'Querry may also be a burnt-out case,' the doctor said. He looked at the fat man in the chair. 'Where now will
he be able to find his therapy? Limelight is not very good for the mutilated.'

This article about a 1960s novel is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Henry Graham Greene OM, CH (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer best
known as a novelist, but who also produced short stories, plays, screenplays, travel writing and criticism. His works
explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world. Greene combined serious literary acclaim
with wide popularity.

Although Greene objected strongly to being described as a Catholic novelist rather than as a novelist who happened
to be Catholic, Catholic religious themes are at the root of much of his writing, especially the four major Catholic
novels: Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair and The Power and the Glory.[1] Later works
such as The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana and The Comedians also show an avid interest in the workings of
international politics and espionage.

Greene suffered from bipolar disorder,[2] which had a profound effect on his writing, and drove him to excess in his
personal life. In a letter to his wife Vivien he told her that he had "a character profoundly antagonistic to ordinary
domestic life", and that "unfortunately, the disease is also one's material".[3]

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Life and work

o 1.1 Childhood
o 1.2 Early career
o 1.3 Novels and other works
o 1.4 Travel
o 1.5 Final years
• 2 Writing style and themes
• 3 List of major works
• 4 References
• 5 Further reading

• 6 External links

[edit] Life and work

[edit] Childhood

Graham Greene was born in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, the fourth of six children. His younger brother Hugh
became Director-General of the BBC, his elder brother Raymond an eminent physician and mountaineer.

His parents, Charles Henry and Marion Greene (née Raymond), were first cousins, members of a large, influential
family that included the Greene King brewery owners, bankers and businessmen. Charles Greene was Second
Master at Berkhamsted School, the headmaster of which was Dr Thomas Fry (married to a cousin of Charles).
Another cousin was the right-wing pacifist Ben Greene, whose politics led to his internment during World War II.

In 1910, Charles Greene succeeded Dr Fry as headmaster; Graham attended the school. Bullied and profoundly
depressed as a boarder, he attempted suicide several times, some, he claimed, by Russian roulette; Michael
Shelden's biography discredits that. In 1920, at age 16, he was psychoanalysed for six months in London, afterwards
returning to school as a day boy; school friends included Claud Cockburn and Peter Quennell.

While an undergraduate at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1925, his first work, a volume of poorly received poetry
entitled Babbling April, was published.[4][5]

[edit] Early career

After graduating with a second-class degree in history,[5] Greene unsuccessfully took up journalism, first on the
Nottingham Journal,[6] and then as a sub-editor on The Times. While in Nottingham he started corresponding with
Vivien Dayrell-Browning, a Roman Catholic convert who had written him to correct him on a point of Catholic
doctrine. Greene converted to Catholicism in 1926 (described in A Sort of Life) and was baptised in February the
same year.[7] He married Vivien in 1927, and they had two children, Lucy (b. 1933) and Francis (b. 1936). In 1948
Greene abandoned Vivien for Dorothy Glover. He had affairs with a number of women, yet remained married.
[edit] Novels and other works

The 2003 Penguin Classics edition of Greene's masterpiece The Power and the Glory

Greene's first published novel was The Man Within (1929).[4] Favourable reception emboldened him to quit his sub-
editor job at The Times and work as a full-time novelist. However, the next two books, The Name of Action (1930)
and Rumour at Nightfall (1932), were unsuccessful; he later disowned them. His first true success was Stamboul
Train (1932), adapted as the film Orient Express (1934) - many of his books would be so adapted.

He supplemented his novelist's income with freelance journalism, book and film reviews for The Spectator, and co-
editing the magazine Night and Day, which folded in 1937 shortly after Greene's film review of Wee Willie Winkie,
featuring nine-year-old Shirley Temple, cost the magazine a lost libel lawsuit. Greene's review claimed that Temple
displayed "a certain adroit coquetry which appealed to middle-aged men".[8] It is now considered one of the first
criticisms of the sexualisation of children for entertainment. The criminal libel could have led to Greene's
imprisonment, and its avoidance, according to Greene's friend Alberto Cavalcanti in an unpublished autobiography,
was the motivation for the visit to Mexico which was to inspire The Power and the Glory.[8] Mexico did not have an
extradition treaty with the UK at the time.

Greene originally divided his fiction into two genres: thrillers (mystery and suspense books), such as The Ministry
of Fear, which he described as entertainments, often with notable philosophic edges; and literary works, such as
The Power and the Glory, which he described as novels, on which he thought his literary reputation was to be
based.[9]

As his career lengthened, both Greene and his readers found the distinction between the entertainments and the
novels to become blurred. His later efforts, such as The Human Factor, The Comedians, Our Man in Havana and
The Quiet American, combine these modes in compressed but remarkably insightful work. He also wrote the
screenplay, and afterward the novella, for the now-classic film noir, The Third Man (1949).

Greene also wrote short stories and plays that were well-received, although he was foremost always a novelist, and
he collected the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Heart of the Matter. His long, successful career and
great readership (for a serious literary novelist) led to hope he would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature;
although considered in 1974, he was not awarded it. Greene's friend and occasional publisher, Michael Korda,
wrote in his memoir Another Life (1999) that Greene believed he was always one vote short of the prize, withheld
by a judge who disliked his Catholicism and left-wing sympathies and "who seemed determined to outlive him".

Greene was awarded England's Order of Merit in 1986.

[edit] Travel

Throughout his life, Greene travelled far from England, to what he called the world's wild and remote places. The
travels led to him being recruited into MI6 by his sister, Elisabeth, who worked for the organisation, and he was
posted to Sierra Leone during the Second World War. Kim Philby, who would later be revealed as a Soviet double
agent, was Greene's supervisor and friend at MI6.[10][11] As a novelist, he wove the characters he met and the places
where he lived into the fabric of his novels.

Greene first left Europe at 31 years of age, in 1935, on a trip to Liberia that produced the travel book Journey
Without Maps. His 1938 trip to Mexico, to see the effects of the government's campaign of forced anti-Catholic
secularisation was paid for by Longman's, thanks to his friendship with Tom Burns.[12] That voyage produced two
books, the factual The Lawless Roads (published as Another Mexico in the U.S.), and the novel The Power and the
Glory. In 1953, the Holy Office informed Greene that The Power and the Glory was damaging to the reputation of
the priesthood, but later, in a private audience with Greene, Pope Paul VI told him that although parts of his novels
would offend some Catholics, he should not pay attention to the criticism.[13] Greene travelled to the Haiti of
François Duvalier, alias "Papa Doc", where occurred the story of The Comedians (1966). The owner of the Hotel
Oloffson in Port-au-Prince, where Greene frequently stayed, named a room in his honour.

There is so much weariness and disappointment in travel that people have to open up — in railway
“ trains, over a fire, on the decks of steamers, and in the palm courts of hotels on a rainy day. They have
to pass the time somehow, and they can pass it only with themselves. Like the characters in Chekhov
they have no reserves — you learn the most intimate secrets. You get an impression of a world peopled
by eccentrics, of odd professions, almost incredible stupidities, and, to balance them, amazing
endurances. ”
—Graham Greene, The Lawless Roads, 1939

[edit] Final years

After his apparently benign involvement in a financial scandal, Greene had to leave Britain in 1966 moving to
Antibes, to be close to Yvonne Cloetta, whom he had known since 1959, a relationship that endured until his death.
In 1981 he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, awarded to writers concerned with the freedom of the individual in
society. One of his final works, the pamphlet J'Accuse — The Dark Side of Nice (1982), concerns a legal matter
embroiling him and his extended family in Nice. He declared that organized crime flourished in Nice, because the
city's upper levels of civic government had protected judicial and police corruption. The accusation provoked a libel
lawsuit that he lost.[14] In 1994, after his death, he was vindicated when the former mayor of Nice, Jacques Médecin,
was imprisoned for corruption and associated crimes.

He lived the last years of his life in Vevey, on Lake Geneva, in Switzerland, the same town Charlie Chaplin was
living in at this time. He visited Chaplin often and the two were good friends.[15] His book Dr. Fischer of Geneva or
the Bomb Party (1980) bases its themes on combined philosophic and geographic influences. He had ceased
attending Mass and confession in the 1950s, but in his final years began to receive the sacraments again from Father
Leopaldo Durán, a Spanish priest who became a friend. He died at age 86 in 1991 and was buried in Corsier-sur-
Vevey cemetery.

His official biographer, Norman Sherry, published the third and final volume of The Life of Graham Greene in
October 2004. Sherry followed Greene's footsteps, at times suffering the diseases that Greene suffered and in the
same place. The biography reveals that Greene continued reporting to British intelligence until his death, allowing
literary scholars and readers to entertain the provocative question of whether Graham Greene was a novelist who
also was a spy, or a spy for whom a life-long novelist's career was the perfect cover.

Greene's literary agent was Jean LeRoy of Pearn, Pollinger & Higham.

[edit] Writing style and themes

The literary style of Graham Greene was described by Evelyn Waugh in Commonweal as "not a specifically literary
style at all. The words are functional, devoid of sensuous attraction, of ancestry, and of independent life".[16] This
lean, realistic prose and readability was thought by Virginia Quarterly Review to be "the main business of holding
the reader's attention."[16] His cinematic visual sense led to a number of his novels being made into films,[17] such as
Brighton Rock in 1947, The End of the Affair in 1955 and 1999, and The Quiet American in 1958 and 2002. He
wrote several original screenplays, such as The Third Man in 1949. He concentrated on portraying the characters'
internal lives, the mental, emotional and spiritual depths. The stories usually occurred in poor, hot and dusty tropical
backwaters in countries such as Mexico, West Africa, Vietnam, Cuba, Haiti and Argentina, which led to the coining
of the expression "Greeneland" to describe such settings.[18]

His novels often have religious themes at the centre. In his literary criticism, he attacked the modernist writers
Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster for having lost the religious sense and for lacking such themes, which, he argued,
resulted in dull, superficial characters who "wandered about like cardboard symbols through a world that is paper-
thin".[19] Only in recovering the religious element, the awareness of the drama of the struggle in the soul carrying the
infinite consequences of salvation and damnation, and of the ultimate metaphysical realities of good and evil, sin
and grace, could the novel recover its dramatic power. Suffering and unhappiness are omnipresent in the world
Greene depicts, and Catholicism is presented against a background of unvarying human evil, sin and doubt. V. S.
Pritchett praised Greene as the first English novelist since Henry James to present, and grapple with, the reality of
evil.[20]

The novels often powerfully portray the Christian drama of the struggles within the individual soul from the
Catholic perspective. Greene was criticised for certain tendencies in an unorthodox direction — in the world, sin is
omnipresent to the degree that the vigilant struggle to avoid sinful conduct is doomed to failure, hence, not central
to holiness. Friend and fellow Catholic Evelyn Waugh attacked that as a revival of the Quietist heresy. This aspect
of his work also was criticised by the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar as giving sin a mystique.

Greene responded that constructing a vision of pure faith and goodness in the novel was beyond his talents. Praise
of Greene from an orthodox Catholic point of view, by Edward Short, is in Crisis magazine,[21] and a mainstream
Catholic critique is presented by Joseph Pearce.[22]

Catholicism's prominence decreased in the later writings. The supernatural realities that haunted the earlier work
declined and was replaced with a humanistic perspective, a change reflected in his public criticism of orthodox
Catholic teaching. Left-wing political critiques assumed greater importance in his novels; for example, he attacked
the American policy in Vietnam in The Quiet American. The tormented believers portrayed were more likely to
have faith in Communism than in Catholicism.

In his later years, Greene was a strong critic of American imperialism, and supported the Cuban leader Fidel Castro,
whom he had met.[23] For Greene and politics, see also Anthony Burgess Politics in the Novels of Graham Greene[24]
In Ways of Escape, reflections of his Mexican trip, he complained that Mexico's government was insufficiently left-
wing compared with Cuba's.[25] In Greene's opinion, "Conservatism and Catholicism should be .... impossible
bedfellows".[26]

In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

“ ”
—Graham Greene

Despite his seriousness, Graham Greene greatly enjoyed parody, even of himself. In 1949, when the New Statesman
held a contest for parodies of Greene's writing style, he submitted an entry under the name N Wilkinson and won
second prize; first prize was awarded to his younger brother Hugh.[citation needed] Graham Greene's entry comprised two
paragraphs of a novel apparently set in Italy, "The Stranger's Hand: An Entertainment". Greene's friend Mario
Soldati, a Piedmontese novelist and film director, believed it had the makings of a suspense film about Yugoslav
spies in postwar Venice. On Soldati's prompting, Greene drafted a film story. The resulting work, The Stranger's
Hand, was later completed by another writer and cinematically rendered by an Italian film director, Mario Soldati.
In 1965 Greene again entered a similar New Statesman competition pseudonymously, and won an honourable
mention.

Graham Greene

Context

Henry Graham Greene was born on October 2, 1904 in Berkhamsted, England. He had a difficult childhood, and he
attempted suicide on a number of occasions. His therapist suggested that he look to writing as a way to deal with his
troubled emotions. At Balliol College, Oxford, he studied modern history, worked as the editor for a campus
newspaper and lived a somewhat dissolute lifestyle. After graduation he went to work at The Nottingham Journal,
and met his future wife, Vivien Dayrell-Browning. She would be instrumental in his conversion to Catholicism,
which took place in February of 1926. Although it is said that initially he only converted in order to win the
affection of Vivien, he eventually became very deeply and seriously interested in his adopted religion.

After publishing The Man Within, which was a critical and commercial success, he began writing full time. But his
next novels, The Name of Action and Rumour at Night met with failure. Stamboul Train was a commercial success
and later became a film. Greene tried his hand at screenwriting, his most well known foray into that medium being
the screenplay for the Orson Welles' film, The Third Man, which won first prize at the Cannes Film Festival in
1949. During the 1930's, he also wrote film reviews, becoming one of the most highly esteemed film critics of his
day. His travels in Mexico in 1938 and his shock at the religious persecution he witnessed there provided the
material for The Lawless Roads (1939) and The Power and the Glory (1939). The latter novel was a great critical
success, winning The Hawthorn Den award, while earning the fury of the Vatican. Catholic bishops and cardinals
who read the book thought it focused too much of its attention on the wretchedness of human beings and painted too
negative a picture of the priesthood.

The advent of World War II led to his wife evacuating with his two children to Crowborough and Oxford, and his
taking a position with the Ministry of Information and the Air Raid Precautions Squad. In 1939 he published The
Confidential Agent and he also wrote children's stories, which were published after the war ended. His novel The
Heart of the Matter is based on his experiences in Sierra Leone during the war, where he went to work for the Secret
Intelligence Service in 1941. He returned to London in 1943, and worked for Counter Intelligence and left the
Service in 1944.

Throughout his life, Greene often visited places of conflict, including Vietnam, Kenya, Poland, Cuba and Haiti, and
mined them for material for his novels. His novel The Quiet American (1955) is about American involvement in
Indochina, Our Man In Havana (1958) is based on his travels in Cuba, The Comedian (1966) deals with a repressive
regime in Haiti, The Honorary Consul (1973) is set in Paraguay and The Human Factor (1978) in South Africa. His
interest in Central American politics led to his becoming acquainted with figures such as Fidel Castro and Manuel
Noriega, and he became a critic of the United States and of Ronald Reagan in particular. Graham Greene died in
Switzerland in 1991.

Graham Greene. The Human Factor. 1978.

How does one distinguish between genre fiction and literary fiction, and how can one claim that a given book is
both? "Literary" implies to me artful writing: language that is worthy of admiration even when taken out the context
of its story. "Literary" also holds for me the implication of moral instruction or a deeper thematic or symbolic
meaning of which the plot and characters are just a surface manifestation.

Another possible distinction between genre fiction and literary fiction, no less subjective, is that genre fiction is
immersive. The language is transparent, and if it gets artful it is because the scene being described is especially
intense. In the case of The Human Factor, the language is mostly barely noticeable and its transparency is disrupted
only by an occasional clumsy metaphor, or when the characters discuss literature, at which point it seems that the
author is using the characters as vehicles to deliver his own (irrelevant to the story) opinions on Tolstoy etcetera.
(These characters deal with espionage, Apartheid, the cold war, life, death, and torture, and I can't believe they think
that hard about books.)

Somewhere I heard that Graham Greene was a communist sympathizer. Without knowing anything about the man I
chose this book from those available at my local used bookseller. (Could be that he has a bad reputation and I'm
blowing my credibility by admitting to reading him but... too late.)

Here's my notes:

With a hand that is at first perfectly steady, he puts a very few pieces into play. We become the board and
understand its relationships.

At the fulcrum of international intrigue is a man without loyalty or ideology. Communists to his left, imperialists to
his right, moved only by uncomplicated romantic love, he breaks through Apartheid, trailing a wake of tangled
consequences.

Layers of motives are revealed as a pool of circumstances is drained of its ambiguity.

Functional prose is flawed only by attempts at poetry, cumbersome and distracting metaphors like gaudy owl
statuettes on a plain stone mantel.

This is a spy novel, readerly. Does it deviate from its genre? In one way: it is interesting, though not especially
satisfying, that such well-paced suspense could end so anticlimactically, on such an ambiguous note. The resolution
we stay awake to read never really arrives. Is this an intentional subversion of genre expectations?

Love loses, and the weather in Moscow is even drearier than that in London. And this, I think, is what the author
wants to tell us about Soviet communism. It is grey, loveless, and a slow asphyxiation of the promise of revolution,
just like the ending to this story is an indefinite suspension of the conflicts we expected would be resolved.

When Arthur Davis, a junior bachelor in the British secret service's African section, is seen taking a file with him
-to meet his girlfriend Cynthia- the brass fears he may be the leak to Moskow, and allows Dr. Percival to terminate
the 'risk factor' by poisoning to avoid a scandal. In fact Davis's desk chief, Maurice Castle, is the double agent since
the South African communists helped him smuggle out his black lover Sarah M., meanwhile his wife and mother of
schoolboy Sam, to force him to cooperate with the Apartheid government. When Cornelius Muller, the South
African official who failed to get him in Pretoria's power, visits London for the anti-communist operation Uncle
Remus, he points out Castle still is the natural suspect... Written by KGF Vissers

Plot Synopsis:
Espionage drama adapted from a Graham Greene novel. The directors of the British foreign intelligence service
MI6 have determined that a double agent in the organization is supplying information to the Soviets...

The Human Factor by Graham Greene

28 September 2008

I keep meaning to read Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana, but I’ve had a difficult time finding it in the library
of late. I picked up this other espionage-based work of his in its place, and I found it to be a more than acceptable (if
rather less humourous) substitute.

The Human Factor by Graham Greene

Maurice Castle, to all outward appearances, leads a life that is so well-ordered that it might easily be described as
boring. He takes the same train to work every morning, eats the same lunch in the same pub that he has frequented
for years, arrives home around the same time each evening, drinks the same amount of whiskey (rather too much,
but not enough to prevent him from functioning in the morning) before bed, and starts his next workday with the
same routine. Even his work for British intelligence, monitoring the trickles of information that come from scattered
agents and observation posts in southern Africa, is far from exciting. The only real colour in his life, so to speak,
comes his wife Sarah and son Sam. Castle had met Sarah in South Africa almost a decade ago, when he was
stationed there, and both of them had fled the country barely a step ahead of BOSS, the South African intelligence
service — because Sarah is black, and their relationship had violated South Africa’s race laws. Castle had hoped
that returning to England would mark the end of his and Sarah’s troubles, but his escape had come at a terrible
price, and not all of his debts had been paid in full. So when Castle’s superiors suspect that someone in his
department has been passing information to the Soviets, and the calm and orderly life that he has tried so hard to
protect is in danger of crumbling around him, Maurice Castle takes the greatest risk of his life in a frantic, last-ditch
effort to salvage his marriage, his family, and what little remains of his freedom.

Graham Greene’s The Human Factor is based on Greene’s experiences in British intelligence during World War II,
as well as his travels to remote locations in British colonial outposts in Africa and elsewhere in the 1940s and
1950s. In his introduction to the book, he states that had hoped to write a novel that depicted intelligence work as a
normal and relatively mundane working world, one which deliberately contradicted the popular image of espionage
as violent, glamourous, and full of action. His other purpose in writing The Human Factor was his interest in
exploring the various contradictions present in international relations, which in the book take the form of British
intelligence’s collaboration with the South African security services. The hypocrisy of officially denouncing
apartheid while simultaneously working with the South Africans against Communist influence and black African
nationalism is a constant theme. Castle’s struggle with the paradox of his work, as he is ordered to grit his teeth and
work with the same South African intelligence officer who had threatened to imprison both him and Sarah, provides
much of the driving force of the plot.

Greene builds the story slowly and methodically, ratcheting up the tension by careful and agonising degrees as
Castle gradually realises the depth of the trap he has laid for himself. The climax culminates in a sickening plot
twist that somehow manages to be both unexpected and oddly inevitable, and gives The Human Factor a frustrating
but nonetheless realistic ending. Much like his earlier novel The Quiet American, Greene’s primary thematic
interest lies in the effects of international politics on the lives of individuals — particularly those who are drawn
into the game against their will. And even if one or two moments within the story push at the edges of the reader’s
suspension of disbelief, The Human Factor does a very thorough job of stripping the intelligence community of its
glamour and reducing it to the cold logic of its outcomes. It feels very plausible, which makes Maurice Castle’s fate
all the more sobering to consider after the fact.

Title
The Human factor

Author
Henry Graham Greene was born in Berkhamsted in 1904. He was Educated at Berkhamsted School where his father
was the headmaster. Although Green had a happy childhood he was obsessed with evil, which made his parents
send him away for six months of psychoanalysis. After he got his degree in modern history he to worked for a
newspaper. After that he moved to London to work as an editor for The London Times. In the thirties he became a
communist. During the Second World War he worked as a secret agent for the Secret intelligence Service. After the
war had ended he travelled around the world and befriended several heads of state. He left England in 1966 and
lived in Antibes in France till he died in 1991. Other books he wrote: Dr Fisher of Geneva, The Bomb Party and
The captain and the enemy.

Publisher
Everyman's Library

First Edition
1978

Edition used
1992

Genre
Because you get to know all the feelings and thoughts of the characters this is a novel of character.

Theme
Love and Loyalty, the inhumanity of people who don't care about others and the even less human behaviour of
government and secret service.

Explanation of the title

The human factor is that of people that care about each other. Government, their secret service, but also individuals
like Percival and Muller don't care. Therefor they behave in an inhuman way.

Summary
Introduction: Maurice castle works for a department of foreign office which is an alias for the British Secret
Service. Seven years ago he met his second wife Sarah in South Africa. Castle Sarah and Sam now try to settle in
Berkhamsted. Because Sarah is black lots of difficulties come knocking on their door. However Carson makes it
possible for them to live there.
Rising action: Within the secret service a leak has been discovered and Davis is the main suspect.
Climax: Meanwhile castle is trying to pay off his debt to Carson by becoming a double agent for the KGB. Carson
feels frightened thus Davis is eliminated.
Down going action: Therefore Castle tries to step out of the KGB but they refuse to let him go. After that Castle
sends his wife and her child Sam to his mother, Whereas he himself flies to Russia after shooting Buller.
Conclusion: When Castle and Sarah finally do have contact with each other the phone line to Moscow goes dead
just as they where talking about the coming of better times.

Point of view narrator

The know it all narrator mainly tells the story in chronological order but also uses several flash backs for Castle's
youth and the events in South Africa.

Characters
Maurice Castle a 62-year-old intelligent man who got married twice. His first wife died during the Second World
War due to a bombing. He has worked for the BSS for over 30 years. He met his wife Sarah when he was in South
Africa. He loves his wife and her son Sam who isn't his one flesh and blood. Castle is also a double agent for the
KGB. Only his wife and Sam call him Maurice. The other characters in the book refer to him as Castle or M.C.
Sarah is Castle's second wife. She is a black South African woman. She was Castle's inside agent during his stay in
South Africa. Sarah does not feel comftable with Castle's mother and only stays in England because of her love for
Castle. Sam is Sarah's son who will be going to Prep school. Bulled is Sam's beloved dog a boxer. Arthur Davis is
Castle's bachelor colleague who is infatuated with his secretary. He votes Labour and drinks too much. It is
discovered that he once takes out reports to read them during lunch. Dr Percival is also a bachelor and eventually
kills Davis. Colonel Daintry is a man who is hart broken after his marriage has ended. When he hears of Davis's
death he resigns from the BSS. Sir john Haregreaves is the head of the BSS. Cornelius Muller is the chief of Boss
who believes in apartheid. Boris is Castle's control in London. Castle trusts him but he shouldn't have.
Setting
The story is set in Berkhamsted, London and Moscow during the seventies.

Appreciation
I liked the book because it gave insight to the current issues of the seventies. Nevertheless I was disappointed about
the ending of the story

The Human Factor highlights a man, Maurice Castle, who is driven at times to make choices based on love and an
often-misplaced sense of moral duty that have some pretty serious consequences for himself and others.

Castle is an agent in MI6, and as the book opens, a leak has been discovered in his division. Suspicion falls on his
partner, Davis, who seems to have a lot more money than an agent in his position should -- he bets,he drives a Jag --
and he's also a pretty heavy drinker. Castle is older, near retirement, and leads a pretty quiet life, seemingly beyond
reproach. But mild-mannered Castle is the one with the secret life. It started during his time in South Africa -- his
black, African wife Sarah, was smuggled out of the apartheid-ruled country by a communist agent; and Castle long
ago decided that he owed a debt of gratitude to the communists and started providing them with information from
British intelligence, thinking that in some way he is helping Sarah's people. However, when his bosses decided that
Castle will be the one who will provide their South African counterparts with information about an American
operation in Africa, and he is forced to work with the very man who had held him on breaking race relations laws in
South Africa vis-a-vis his relationship with Sarah there, a chain of events occurs which unravels his quiet and
ordered life in England with his family.

However, this book really is NOT a story about espionage or the cold-war intelligence game. Castle marches to his
own inner sense of personal morality, as noted by his mother at one point, where she says:

"You always had an exaggerated sense of gratitude for the least kindness. It was a sort of insecurity ....You once
gave away a good fountain pen to someone at school who had offered you a bun with a piece of chocolate inside."

It hit me while reading that this "sense of gratitude" is the key to understanding Maurice Castle -- and it offers an
insight into the reasons behind Castle's actions. Loyalty, for Castle, begets loyalty, but the reader may make
judgments based on his or her own understanding of patriotism or morality that misconstrue Castle's actions
completely, so understanding Castle as a human being rather than as a spy or as a British citizen is key to
understanding this story.

The Human Factor is truly an awesome novel, one of the best I've read this year. It starts out very slow, but the
tension builds as the book progresses until you're so caught up in it that you can't look away. I'd definitely
recommend it to people who enjoy British literature, and to those who enjoy reading about the grayness of human
morality. It's also pretty decent as a novel of espionage if you don't want to get into the deeper aspects of the novel.
Very highly recommended. ( )
bcquinnsmom | Dec 28, 2008 |
Even though Graham Greene lived and worked well into the ending of the 20th century, I was a little surprised
when I saw the date of publication of ‘The Human Factor’: 1978, the year I graduated from university: For some
reason I had associated it with the 1950s and an earlier generation.

Greene had had an early influence on me - but reading Greene from this end of my allotted time is a very different
experience. The realisation that he is dealing in my lifetime gives a sharpness, if not bitterness, and reflecting on
Greene’s observations is a more personal undertaking than initially presumed. Time present is to be found in time
past.

This is a spy story – in the way that King Lear is a story about retirement or Waiting for Godot a play about a
missed appointment. The title is appropriate – if 007 is all action, and Smiley not really much deeper than your
average detective, Castle, the central character here, and Davis, his co-worker in the Security Service are not only
fleshed out and rounded physically, but psychologically believable. The guilts and gratitudes, the anxieties and
loves Mr Greene weaves into their tale are not mere excuses for action, they are the subject of the story – The
Human Factor.

Through a debt of honour Castle feels bound to reveal what amount to trivial secrets to the ideological enemies of
his nation – enemies who acted with more humanity and goodwill than supposed allies and friends. No guilt arises
from the treachery, if anything it is a re-affirmation of the love he feels for his wife (the root cause of the debt) and
a genuine attempt to relieve the suffering of her ‘people’ under the vicious Apartheid system both the British and
American governments are working with covertly (and not so covertly) in an attempt to stop the threat of Africa
turning ‘red’.

What we get is the clash of an individual with systems – the resulting crushing of the human by the state and its
apparatus is quite desolating. The world has turned upside down – the doctor seeks ways to kill, the policeman
attempts to justify and excuse crime; the Catholic church is anything but catholic and even the guard dog fawns on
strangers.

Accidents happen in this ‘we’re not totalitarian’ state – the wrong man is executed (how else can we prevent bad
publicity) – much as in the ‘regrettable’ accident of the killing of the innocent Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes.

Fictional though Mr Greene’s world is, it is a fiction based on a mental reality – that of a security service more
frightened of the enemy within than a real threat without: I can only compare it to the human immune system
turning against the cells of its own body.

Relevant to all of us in the present climate of ‘wars’ against terror which produce far more shocking tortures and
crimes against humanity on behalf of the good guys than the bad guys could dream up (or afford). ( )
akfarrar | Oct 31, 2008 |
My chest hurts. Okay. One thing I like about this book is how his secret agents are neither action heroes or ordinary
boring joes like he's trying to deflate the myth and shit. Like, in this book it's just a job, but it's still a really crazy
job and they do intense things. Feels accurate. ( )
martinmccarvill | Jun 24, 2008 | 1
Graham Green does world-weary like no other. ( )
mjd135 | May 27, 2008 |
Graham Greene’s passion for moral complexity and his stylistic aplomb were perfectly suited to the cat-and mouse
game of the spy novel, a genre he practically invented and to which he periodically returned while fashioning one of
the twentieth century’s longest, most triumphant literary careers. Written late in his life, The Human Factor displays
his gift for suspense at its most refined level, and his understanding of the physical and spiritual vulnerability of the
individual at its deepest.

Review:
"Graham Greene's beautiful and disturbing novel is filled with tenderness, humour, excitement and doubt." - The
Times
Review:
The Human Factor is Greene’s most extensive attempt to incorporate into fiction what he had learned of espionage
when recruited by MI6 during World War II . . . What it offers is a veteran excursion into Greene’s imaginative
world . . . Sometimes seen as a brooding prober into the dark recesses of the soul where sins and scruples alike
fester, he is equally at home in sending a narrative careering along at break-neck pace . . . Raising the demarcation
line between ‘serious’ fiction and fast-plotted entertainment, Greene ensures that components of both jostle
energizingly together in his pages.” –from the Introduction by Peter Kemp
meadcl | May 21, 2008 |
The moral relativism referenced by clshaver08 is, in fact, one of the strengths of the book. As Greene himself knew
too well, however right and moral one government, or government stance, may be apropos another, the intelligence
services are not and cannot be a particularly scrupulous business. They function in a zone of amorality, bending
what constitutes acceptable means to serve an end. Whether that end is higher or lower and who is served makes
little difference to the essential character of espionage, itself. Not only is it within this world of espionage that the
novel takes place; it is on this very quality (among others) that Greene wishes to comment.
Nor, beside love, does the orientation of imperfect and ultimately NOT ideally scrupulous government seem to
matter very much. That it DOES may be, to the individual at a given time, utterly beside the point. As Greene says,
in intelligence, love is the one fatal weakness.

On the uneasy day I read The Human Factor, I often felt I'd read the book before. Whether too much Greene blends,
one tale into another, or I in fact read it, in some earlier year when the paperback was floating freely and I did not,
as yet, recognize the name, I can't say. If so, perhaps the repetition is responsible for my disappointment. For all the
disillusioned and glorious grey, literary asides, subtly limned evil characters, the careful unknowing of so many -
the interest diminished; the book bored me well before its end; and if it had not been Greene, despite all claims of
mastery, I might not have finished. ( )
Eurydice | Apr 1, 2007 | 1
An uncompromising masterpiece depicting the world of espionage in all its mucky glory! ( )
LizzySiddal | Jul 30, 2006 |
Very impressed. This is the first book by G.G. I have read. I do not like the neither USA or USSR is bad or good
moral relativism which is expressed by several characters (particularly Daintry), but it is so well written that I do
find myself rooting for the traitor Castle.

Graham Greene on The Human Factor:

My ambition after the war was to write a novel of espionage free from the conventional violence, which
has not, in spite of James Bond, been a feature of the British Secret Service. I wanted to present the
Service unromantically as a way of life, men going daily to their office to earn their pensions, the
background much like that of any other profession — whether the bank clerk or the business director —
an undangerous routine, and within each character the more important private life. When I had spent a
few years in the Service during the war, first in West Africa and then in London, I had certainly found little
excitement or melodrama coming my way.

…I began The Human Factor more than ten years before it was published and abandoned it in despair after two or
three years' work…I abandoned it mainly because of the Philby affair. My double agent Maurice Castle bore no
resemblance in character or motive to Philby, none of the characters has the least likeness to anyone I have know,
but I disliked the idea of the novel being taken as a roman a clef. I know very well from experience that it is only
possible for me to base a very minor and transient character on a real person. A real person stands in the way of
imagination. Perhaps a trick of speech, a physical trait may be used, but I can write no more than a few pages before
realizing that I simply don't know enough about the character to use him, even if he is an old friend. With the
imaginary character I am sure — I know that Doctor Percival in The Human Factor admires the painting of Ben
Nicholson, I know that Colonel Daintry will open a tin of sardines when he returns from the funeral of his
colleague.

…I sent a copy of the book to Moscow, to my friend Kim Philby, and his reply interested me. His criticism was
valid. I had made Castle's circumstances in Moscow, he wrote, too bleak. He himself had found everything provided
for him, even to a shoehorn, something he had never possessed before.