Cold War Crossings: International Travel and Exchange Across the Soviet Bloc, 1940s-1960s

Taylor & Francis eBooks, 2019

Routledge eBooks, 2019

ARO: Annali.Reviews.Online, 2019

Design and Culture

Focusing on the Cold War Expo in Brussels 1958, this article takes the metaphor of "design diplomacy" as a lens through which to explore the dilemmas of Soviet exhibition planners charged with designing a modern image of the USSR at the World Fair. Seeking ways to represent the advantages of socialism to foreign, especially Western publics, the exhibition organizers began to question established Soviet tradecraft in the production of mass exhibitions, concluding instead that if the USSR was to make itself understood by the capitalist "other," it must adopt selectively the idiom of its audience and interlocutor. The Soviet 'self was constituted in relation to two main "others": the USA, whose pavilion was adjacent to the Soviet one; and the anticipated public, about whom the Soviet designers knew little. As in diplomatic transactions, the art of persuasion demanded negotiation and compromise, resulting in a degree of transculturation and cross-fertilization.

Brolly. Journal of Social Sciences, 2019

Abstract The fall of the Berlin Wall November 9, 1989, resulted from a complex pattern of causes, including historical contingencies. One of these was Günter Schabowski´s ill-phrased announcement of free travel for GDR citizens, another Mikhail Gorbachev´s access to power in1985 and his promise of perestroika. - At the core of the matter lies „the German question“ as the key issue of controversies, in the early phase of the Cold War. Even after 1955, when the two post-war German states had been integrated into the military blocs, the German question remained on the diplomatic agenda. The erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961, however, signified that the „German problem“ had been shelved. After the Cuban crisis of October 1962, when the two superpowers refrained from nuclear confrontation, they appeared to enter into an era of détente. Facing up to these facts, West Berlin´s Mayor Willy Brandt and, foremost, his adviser Egon Bahr developped their concept of „Ostpolitik“. Its long-term perspective was to change the status quo of German division by accepting the status quo, i.e. the consequences of WW II, the Oder-Neisse border to Poland, the reality of the blocs, and the East German state under Communist rule. It was based on the assumption a) that détente was an irreversible process and b) that the GDR, displaying economic stability at that time, while remaining an indispensable element in the Soviet bloc, would be disposed to forms of cooperation. The dialectics of history proved otherwise. Geopolitical rivalries between the superpowers continued to exist. In 1979 Soviet Union´s military intervention in Afghanistan coincided with its opening another round in the arms race focussing on intermediate-range missiles in Central Europe. Both decisions propitiated the interior crisis of the Soviet Union, due to technological backwardness and military overburdening of its state-run economy. Gorbachev´s attempts at reform proved ineffective, his proclamation of glasnost encouraged dissident movements in Eastern Central Europe, e.g. the independent peace movement in the GDR, to resist their regimes. Gorbachev´s renunciation of the „Brezhnev doctrine“ motivated reform-minded governments in Poland and Hungary to test the limits of Soviet hegemony. The decisive factor was the comprehensive crisis in the GDR: an unproductive economy based on external debts, a decrepit infrastructure, ecological damage, an oppressive dictatorship rejecting reform, dissident activists challenging the regime. All this, in the autumn of 1989, led to the mass exodus of East Germans fleeing across Hungary´s open border to Austria. The upshot of this course of events was the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Germany´s reunification in 1990 entailed the creation of the European Union, an in-between of a confederation and a federal union of states. Its raison d´être is to a) provide a structure of peace in Europe b) to avert German hegemony on the Continent based on its power potential. Nonetheless, apprehensions concerning Germany´s future role in Europe have not altogether vanished. With regard to its immigration policy, some observers speak of a new type of „moral hegemony“. Last but not least, Merkel´s decision in 2015 to admit millions of migrants to Europe, tipped the scale in favour of Brexit. https://www.journals.lapub.co.uk/index.php/Brolly/article/view/1308

This seminar paper explores the historiography of Berlin as the ultimate Cold War Symbol, covering American, Soviet, and other international perspectives.

2020

Focusing on Western tourism behind the Iron Curtain, this chapter introduces the main research questions addressed in the volume: firstly, how and why Eastern Europe became a tourist destination for citizens of the West; secondly what impact this had on the development of a tourism industry in the Eastern bloc; and thirdly to what extent the experiences of Western tourists in Eastern Europe influenced mutual perceptions and Cold War stereotypes of “the other”. The chapter situates these questions in three debates in recent historiography: the history of transnational tourism, of the cultural Cold War, and of mobilities in the supposedly backward and static societies in Eastern Europe

Studies in European Cinema, 2020

This article traces informal world cinema networks at Soviet film festivals. It argues that the cultural diplomacy approach, where state objectives determine the value of cultural exchange, fails to account for the full range of connections made at Soviet film festivals during the Cold War. Personal ties have been crucial to the development of film festivals and the cinematic movements they engendered. The Soviet state aimed to position Soviet cinema as a better alternative to decadent European and commercial Hollywood cinemas, and as a model for film cultures in socialist Eastern Europe and decolonization-era Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This article first demonstrates how the Moscow International Film Festival (1959-present) and the Tashkent Festival of Asian, African, and Latin American Cinema (1968–1988; Latin America included from 1976) constructed a more inclusive map of world cinema than major European film festivals at Cannes, Venice, and Berlin. It then shows how African, Cuban, and Vietnamese delegations forged informal alliances around the emergent Third Cinema (militant Third World cinema) movement at the 1967 Moscow festival. Strong unofficial connections formed by international festival guests transcended and contradicted the aims of Soviet cultural diplomacy.

in: Sabine Hake and Philip Broadbent (ed.): Berlin. Divided City 1945-1989, Berghahn Books, New York , 2010

Journal of Contemporary History, 2012