Beyond the Divide

Entangled Histories of Cold War Europe

Simo Mikkonen, Pia Koivunen

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781785338267, 9781782388661
• eBook ISBN: 9781782388678
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Cold War history has emphasized the division of Europe into two warring camps with separate ideologies and little in common. This volume presents an alternative perspective by suggesting that there were transnational networks bridging the gap and connecting like-minded people on both sides of the divide. Long before the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were institutions, organizations, and individuals who brought people from the East and the West together, joined by shared professions, ideas, and sometimes even through marriage. The volume aims at proving that the post-WWII histories of Western and Eastern Europe were entangled by looking at cases involving France, Denmark, Poland, Romania, Switzerland, and others.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Illustrations and Maps
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction — Beyond the Divide
• Part I — Political Processes and Transnational Networks
• Chapter 1 — Opening Up Political Space: Informal Diplomacy, East-West Exchanges, and the Helsinki Process
• Chapter 2 — Challenging Old Cold War Stereotypes: The Case of Danish-Polish Youth Exchange and the European Détente, 1965-1975
• Chapter 3 — Transmitting the "Freedom Virus": France, the USSR, and Cultural Aspects of European Security Cooperation
• Chapter 4 — Cultural Diplomacy of Switzerland and the Challenge of Peaceful Coexistence, 1956-75
• Part II — Interplay in the Academic Contexts
• Chapter 5 — Expert Groups Closing the Divide: Estonian-Finnish Computing Cooperation since the 1960s
• Chapter 6 — French-Romanian Academic Exchanges in the 1960s
• Chapter 7 — Hungary Opens toward the West: Political Preconditions for Finnish-Hungarian Cooperation in Research and Development in the 1960s and 1970s
• Chapter 8 — "Discreet" Intermediaries: Transnational Activities of the Foundation pour une entraide intellectuelle européenne, 1966-1991
• Part III — Limitations for Transnational Networks
• Chapter 9 — The Image of "Real France": Instrumentalization of French Culture in the Early Communist Czechoslovakia
• Chapter 10 — Dealing with "Friends": Soviet Friendship Societies in Western Europe as a Challenge for Western Diplomacy
• Chapter 11 — The Soviet Union Encounters Anglia: Britain's Russian Magazine as a Medium for Cross-Border Communication
• Part IV — Along the Borderlines
• Chapter 12 — Transnational Television in Europe: Cold War Competition and Cooperation
• Chapter 13 — Transnational Spaces between Poland and Finland: Grassroots Efforts to Dismantle the Iron Curtain and Their Political Entanglements
• Chapter 14 — A Filter for Western Cultural Products: The Influence of Italian Popular Culture on Yugoslavia, 1955-65
• Bibliography
• Index