The Balkans in the Cold War

Svetozar Rajak, Konstantina E. Botsiou, Eirini Karamouzi, Evanthis Hatzivassiliou, Svetozar Rajak, Konstantina E. Botsiou, Eirini Karamouzi, Evanthis Hatzivassiliou

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781137439017
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137439031
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Eastern European History
• Index: History

Positioned on the fault line between two competing Cold War ideological and military alliances, and entangled in ethnic, cultural and religious diversity, the Balkan region offers a particularly interesting case for the study of the global Cold War system. This book explores the origins, unfolding and impact of the Cold War on the Balkans on the one hand, and the importance of regional realities and pressures on the other.  Fifteen contributors from history, international relations, and political science address a series of complex issues rarely covered in one volume, namely the Balkans and the creation of the Cold War order; Military alliances and the Balkans; uneasy relations with the Superpowers; Balkan dilemmas in the 1970s and 1980s and the 'significant other' – the EEC; and identity, culture and ideology. The book's particular contribution to the scholarship of the Cold War is that it draws on extensive multi-archival research of both regional and American, ex-Soviet and Western European archives.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I: The Balkans and the Creation of the Cold War Order
• Chapter 1: Greece and the Birth of Containment: An American Perspective
• Chapter 2: Stalin, the Split with Yugoslavia, and Soviet–East European Efforts to Reassert Control, 1948–53
• Chapter 3: From Regional Role to Global Undertakings: Yugoslavia in the Early Cold War
• Part II: Military Alliances and the Balkans
• Chapter 4: The Puzzle of the Heretical: Yugoslavia in NATO Political Analysis, 1951–72
• Chapter 5: Between Global and Regional Cold Wars: Turkey’s Search to Harmonize Its Security Engagements in the 1950s
• Chapter 6: The Warsaw Pact in the Balkans: The Bulgarian Perspective
• Part III: Uneasy Relations with the Superpowers
• Chapter 7: The Balkan Challenge to the Warsaw Pact, 1960–64
• Chapter 8: ‘We Did Not Quarrel, We Did Not Curse’: The Price of Yugoslav Independence After the Soviet Intervention in Czechoslovakia
• Chapter 9: The US, the Balkans and Détente, 1963–73
• Part IV: Balkan Dilemmas in the 1970s and 1980s and the ‘Significant Other’: The EEC
• Chapter 10: The Only Game in Town? EEC, Southern Europe and the Greek Crisis of the 1970s
• Chapter 11: Under the Shadow of the Soviet Union: The EEC, Yugoslavia and the Cold War in the Long 1970s
• Chapter 12: Balkan Dilemmas in the 1970s and 1980s: A Point of No Return?
• Part V: Identity, Culture, Ideology
• Chapter 13: Yugoslavia: The 1950 Cultural and Ideological Revolution
• Chapter 14: The Fusion of Regional and Cold War Problems: The Macedonian Triangle Between Greece, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, 1963–80
• Chapter 15: Cutting Through the Cold War: The EEC and Turkey’s Great Westernization Debate
• Part VI: Conclusion
• Chapter 16: The Balkans: A Cold War Mystery
• Index