Local Cold War connections remind that some wars never end

When the red flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics first snapped in the cold wind above St. Petersburg, Russia, the world changed. Though some 7,000 miles away from the Iron Range, this event altered life here more than most American towns.

First of all, the Iron Range was, in 1917, a land of immigrants. Those immigrants came from 43 nations, mostly in Europe, for many reasons. To work, yes, and sometimes to flee hardship and tyranny overseas. What surprised many of them is that the fight they sought to avoid was waiting for them here in America. The conditions that brewed socialism in Germany and Russia were global. There was more opportunity in America, but also more inequality among the classes.

Until 1917, the Iron Range entertained socialist clubs, lectures and demonstrations. Most immigrants and American-born people weren’t socialists, but socialist thought nevertheless stirred Range politics alongside other ideologies. 

After the Russian Revolution, however, socialism became an American swear word, one of the “seven words you can’t say on television” if you want to get elected. (Though it seems there are fewer such words today). Despite this, socialism flourished in enclaves across the Iron Range. In Cherry, a boy named Arvo Halberg would grow up to became Gus Hall, the union organizer who led the Communist Party USA for the latter half of the 20th Century.

It took 25 years for the labor movement to organize industrial workplaces after communism took hold in Russia, fighting the “S” word all the way. The DFL only became a dominant party in Minnesota after leaders like Hubert Humphrey made a show of expunging socialists from its ranks. And yet, venerable unions like the United Steelworkers of America owe their existence to socialists like Hall, who organized for the union in the 1940s.

Thus, Americans never really learned what socialism is, except as a catch-all insult against any left-of-center policy or politician. It became a flag flown in war. And we understood war quite well. So you might say that the “Cold War” really started amid World War I here on the Range, not after World War II as we are sometimes taught. 

It’s hard to describe the Cold War today. We called it a war, but it wasn’t that exactly, even though the Korean and Vietnam conflicts both happened right in the middle of it. The Cold War was a global clash between ideologies. Capitalism and communism, I suppose, though we called capitalism “freedom” when I was a kid, and it meant the same thing as “democracy.” That was a different time.

Growing up in the 1980s and ‘90s near the end of the Cold War wasn’t the same experience that faced children of the ‘50s and ‘60s. By the time I came along, everyone knew that a small metal school desk wasn’t going to save us from a nuclear blast. We clearly understood that we’d be vaporized instantly if we were lucky. (Thanks a lot, TV movie “The Day After.”)

But this wasn’t something Gen X kids worried about much. Between “Rocky IV” and “The Hunt for Red October,” we saw America winning this so-called war. Behind the scenes, however, northern Minnesota played a big role in U.S. defensive strategy during the Cold War.

The Air National Guard 148th Fighter Wing in Duluth owes its history to the Cold War. From the late 1940s, the Duluth air base was integral to U.S. defense against potential Soviet attacks, which would likely have come from the North.

Last year, I was interviewed by documentarian Mike Scholtz of PBS North about the Cold War. In talking about my research into Gus Hall and early Iron Range history, I told a story about how, from my vantage point as a kid in 1989, it seemed like the Cold War ended because of a concert by Alvin and the Chipmunks. The Chipmunks rocked so hard the Berlin Wall fell down on a Saturday morning cartoon. 

It started as an offhand story, but I’ve now learned that my boyhood cartoon theory was reenacted in a scene in his upcoming documentary. For the record, I still think the Chipmunks played a crucial role in lifting the yoke of oppression in East Germany.

Scholtz’s film, “Cold War Secrets of Northern Minnesota,” airs Thursday, Dec. 5 at 8 p.m. on PBS North out of Duluth.

It’s hard to explain the Cold War in the context we learned at the time. But it’s easier to understand it if we look at the world today. 

What are today’s great powers fighting for? Technology. Data. Control over markets and minds. When you understand that’s what was at stake in the Cold War, too, you see that it never really ended. It might not, until someone actually sets off one of those bombs. Wisdom and enlightenment seem less popular than ever, but they offer the only safe passage to the future.

Aaron J. Brown is an author and college instructor from northern Minnesota’s Iron Range. He writes the blog MinnesotaBrown.com and co-hosts the podcast “Power in the Wilderness” on Northern Community Radio. This piece first appeared in the Saturday, Nov. 30, 2024 edition of the Mesabi Tribune.

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