Kenyon Zimmer

Patryk Babiracki

Approaching the early decades of the “Iron Curtain” with new questions and perspectives, this important book examines the political and cultural implications of the communists’ international initiatives. Building on recent scholarship and working from new archival sources, the seven contributors to this volume study various effects of international outreach—personal, technological, and cultural—on the population and politics of the Soviet bloc. Several authors analyze lesser-known complications of East-West exchange; others show the contradictory nature of Moscow’s efforts to consolidate its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and in the Third World. An outgrowth of the forty-sixth annual Walter Prescott Webb Lectures, hosted in 2011 by the University of Texas at Arlington, Cold War Crossings features diverse focuses with a unifying theme.

International Travel and Exchange across the Soviet Bloc, 1940s-1960s

Cold War Crossings

Austin Jersild

This volume examines how numerous international transfers, circulations, and exchanges shaped the world of socialism during the Cold War. Over the course of half a century, the Soviets shaped politics, values and material culture throughout the vast space of Eurasia, and foreign forces in turn often influenced Soviet policies and society. The result was the distinct and interconnected world of socialism, or the Socialist Second World. Drawing on previously unavailable archival sources and cutting-edge insights from “New Cold War” and transnational histories, the twelve contributors to this volume focus on diverse cultural and social forms of this global socialist exchange: the cults of communist leaders, literature, cinema, television, music, architecture, youth festivals, and cultural diplomacy. The book’s contributors seek to understand the forces that enabled and impeded the cultural consolidation of the Socialist Second World. The efforts of those who created this world, and the limitations on what they could do, remain key to understanding both the outcomes of the Cold War and a recent legacy that continues to shape lives, cultures and policies in post-communist states today.

Patryk Babiracki

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