Beyond the Cold War

Acknowledgments

“Beginnings are always messy,” John Galsworthy famously wrote, and having made so many beginnings, I am humbled at all the debts of gratitude that I owe to those who helped me at each start. I am grateful to professional colleagues, friends, family, and people I have never met—nor will ever meet—whose ideas coalesced here. I thank the authors who shared their insights and ideas and worked so hard to create this volume. They have brought with them their experiences and insights, writing at a time of great peril, and have varying constraints that make the gift of their scholarship one I can never repay.

When John Chetro-Szivos offered me a chance to teach graduate courses in Poland to international students studying at Clark University/Społeczna Akademia Nauk, he suggested it could offer new research opportunities. I thank him for that chance and inspiration. In preparation, I consulted Colleen Creighton, my friend since high school, who lived in Poland for years. I talked with my co-worker Barbara Szabłowska, who introduced me to her family members, Mariusz Szabłowski and Urszula Szabłowska. They welcomed me and my family each time we came to Poland, holding true to the phrase, “Gość w domu Bóg w domu.” While there, I met wonderful colleagues and students—too many to name all here. Deliberation scholar Anna Przybylska’s attention to improving how democracy is practiced made her a kindred spirit, and she is a collaborator who I value deeply. I thank her, and Joanna Michalek, for continued collaboration and friendship. I appreciate Maria Burhela, Nadia Dziedzic, and Olena Śledź for sharing their ideas on Ukraine, and Maria for help with translations. I am thankful to Zibi Pyszka, Anna Chruściel, Pavlo Orlianskyi, Nrupa Parikh, Manit Parikh, Shatha Alomar, Oleg Pavliv, Sergii Odnodvorets, Vadym Rakytianskyi, Aneta Kluch, Adediran Adelekan, Ania Kukielińska, Valentyna Kalich, more, for all I have learned from you.

My initial work on Polish perspectives on Brexit, found a fortunate editor in Wenshan Jia, who took a chance on me. I am grateful for his faith in this work; it inspired me to continue. Later, sitting on a train in Warsaw, in 2017, writing in my field notes about how President Trump would be coming to Poland, I asked Guy McHendry, who was editing a special issue of Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, if he would be interested in a study of Trump’s upcoming Warsaw speech. His instant enthusiasm about the idea helped me to start work immediately on that very trip. During that writing process, I asked John Murphy about the scholarship on U.S. presidents abroad. He encouraged my writing and suggested a book. Thank you to Jennifer Mercieca for reading the proposal. I deeply appreciate Mary Stuckey and Mitchell McKinney for believing in its promise. At Peter Lang, Niall Kennedy, Elizabeth Howard, and Joshua Charles deserve special notice for their support.

I am grateful to professional mentors, colleagues, and friends in thinking about rhetoric, culture, and communication: Bob Ivie, John Lucaites, Mike Hogan, Donal Carbaugh, Vernon Cronen, Carole Blair, Bob Craig, Leda Cooks, Ken Brown, Vernon Cronen, F. Jane Blankenship, Hermann Stelzner, Vincent Bevilacqua, Michelle Scollo, Trudy Milburn, David Boromisza-Habashi, Iris Chelaru, Lynn Comella, Lisa Rudnick, Alissa Sklar, Eric Morgan, Esteban del Río, Jennifer B. Pierce, Sunny Lie Owens, Liliya Karimova, Thomas Vaughn, Stephanie Houston Grey, Randy Osborn, and Irwin Mallin.

I thank Justyna Bienek for teaching me Polish, and for being an enthusiastic connection to the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, to and to Marysia Galbraith and to Siobhan Doucette for sharing ideas there and beyond.

My former dean David Goldenberg, and subsequent dean, Fran Altvater, ensured a safe and collegial place to work. Laurie Fasciano was an amazing colleague guiding me through all my work, helping me to understand new ways to get good things done. The J. Holden Camp Faculty Fellowship supported fieldwork on public memory in Poland, on the European Solidarity Center. The insights I gained from that work informed this project.

Department chairs who nurture collegiality are gems. I am fortunate to have had several such chairs. Robert Kagan, Dan Williamson, and Michael Robinson have supported me in various roles and schools. Thank you to Maleka Donaldson and Margaret Tarampi for starting the writing group, and to Mari Firkatian and Olga Sharp for help in bringing greater local focus to Central and Eastern Europe to Hartford. And I am incredibly lucky to call the incomparable Lynne Kelly—who has been both department chair and mentor—my friend.

Professional associations occasionally engender lasting friendships. I thank Christy Knopf for sharing advice. Benjamin Bates was a patient editor at the Southern Communication Journal for an issue that influenced this volume. Noemi Marin was a strong encouragement and inspiration for this work. I value her precision of thought, creativity, spirit of independence, and kind ear when I needed one.

I am grateful that my father’s parents, Aromanians from Albania and Greece, came to the United States. It was here that my father’s determination to get an education thrived. Surpassing the grammar-school education of his parents, Dr. John W. Custer helped impart both the importance of education and perseverance to me. My mother, Marie E. Custer, inspired me to be a teacher and use all there is to use, reaching people where they are. I am also grateful for my sisters Anastasia and Kerry, and their families.

Traveling to Poland with Tom, Tommy, and Charlie year after year made the experience more meaningful. Traveling through life with them is even better. “Love has no age, no limit; and no death” (yes, Galsworthy again); tak bardzo cię kocham.

***

I dedicate this book to the People of Ukraine fighting to retain their democratic rights and national sovereignty, and to all those who suffer under oppressive actions by antidemocratic regimes.

Introduction: Centering Conversations on Presidential Rhetoric in Central and Eastern Europe

Rebecca M. Townsend

Sirens blared. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stood in St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Cathedral in Kyiv, welcoming U.S. President Joseph Biden, after his unannounced 10-hour train ride from Poland to bring symbolic importance to the city, still standing.¹ This was President’s Day in the United States, which highlighted the relationship between the two nations. It was the first time a sitting U.S. president visited a nation abroad at war, with no U.S. air cover. The visit, days before the one-year anniversary of Russia’s war in Ukraine, involved Biden and Zelenskyy walking to the Wall of Remembrance to honor those who died in the war. They had “fruitful” discussions about long-range weapons.² Biden then visited with President Andrzej Duda of Poland, the first time a U.S. president visited Poland twice within one year.

Nobel Laureate poet Wisława Szymborska has written that “Every beginning is only a sequel,” and that the book of history “is always open half through.”³ When politicians and scholars in the United States were confronted with Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine following their 2014 annexation of Crimea, one reaction was to refer to the Cold War. Cole argues that this frame resonates (with Americans) because it taps into “enduring features of the American political culture at a time when the United States enjoys its status as victor in the Cold War.”⁴ It rests on American exceptionalism, a paradigm that U.S. President Bill Clinton distinctly modified.⁵ Yet here we are again. The frame itself, and the focus on U.S. presidents’ rhetoric, portray the nations that run from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, east of Germany and West of Russia, merely as blank slates, peoples who are acted upon and places whose borders are moved—“God’s playground” indeed.⁶ Fearful of war, and assuming the United States was stoking unfounded fears in early reports about Russia’s war footing, even ice cream companies called for peace (meaning, the United States should stop its warnings, not that Russia should return Crimea or not invade a sovereign, democratically led nation again).⁷ The frame is persistent. It captured intellectuals’ imaginations for decades; it even became the frame for naming tour books—but while this latter practice is stopping,⁸ the former is just beginning to crack. Even those who sought to rebel against it often did so with sympathy for an imperialist nation, unquestioningly accepting a dictator’s perspective on others’ identity. How can scholars remove the burden on our view of rhetoric in and of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)?⁹ Though the subject matter in the present volume may be new to some readers, if viewed from a global perspective, it acts more like a sequel.