“Converging Worlds of the Cold War: Eastern Europe and the Global South” Roundtable
May 19, 16.00
New Europe College (Plantelor no. 21, Bucharest)
The roundtable reflects the general aim of our project “Turning Global,” that is, to provide the framework for a comprehensive analysis of post-1945 state socialism’s international projection. The roundtable will map the interaction between communist regimes in Eastern Europe and newly de-colonized countries from the Global South. The participants wish to look into the impact of de-colonization and its tribulations on state socialist countries’ positioning and self-representation during the global Cold War.
Some of the themes we wish to touch upon are:
- The anti-imperialist, post-colonial solidarity of Eastern Europe with the struggles in the Global South (e.g., the Vietnam war, Cuba, or Lusophone Africa) and its impact on domestic representations of revolution
- The re-imagination of the Eastern Europe as potential emancipation from the status of Cold War (semi-)periphery
- The ‘development race’ from the point of view of the exchanges and entanglements between East and South (e.g., role of socialist experts in the “Third World”)
- Can we talk about an alternative globalization from Eastern Europe during the Cold War?
Participants:
- Jill Massino, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
- Agnes Gagyi, NEC fellow
- Corina Doboș, member of “Turning Global” team (University of Bucharest)
- Bogdan C. Iacob, member of “Turning Global” team (Hungarian Academy of Sciences)
Turning Global. Socialist Experts during the Cold War (1960s-1980s) 