Between East and West: Memories of the Cold War (original) (raw)
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As a historical period, the Cold War may be seen as a rivalry between two nuclear superpowers that threatened global destruction. The rivalry took place within a common frame of reference, in which a new historical relationship between imperialism and nationalism worked in remarkably parallel ways across the superpower divide. The new imperial–national relationship between superpowers and the client states also accommodated developments such as decolonization, multiculturalism, and new ideologies, thus producing a hegemonic configuration characterizing the period. The models of development, structures of clientage, unprecedented militarization of societies, designs of imperial enlightenment, and even many gender and racial/cultural relationships followed similar tracks within, and often between, the two camps. Finally, counter-hegemonic forces emerged in regions of the non-Western world, namely China and some Islamic societies. Did this portend the beginning of the end of a long per...
Negotiating Cold War Culture at the Crossroads of East and West
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Since the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, our understanding of Cold War history has changed considerably. The wave of new research spurred by the opening of archives and opportunities for novel East-West comparisons threw into sharper relief aspects of the Cold War contest that had received little attention previously. It has become increasingly clear that the Cold War was not only a military, political, and economic conflict, but also one profoundly implicated in, and shaped by, key transformations in twentieth-century culture. 1 Capitalizing on the increased accessibility of primary sources from former socialist states, recent research has provided valuable insights into the politics of everyday culture on both sides of the Iron Curtain, 2 and we have seen as well the publication of several transnational accounts of the cultural Cold War spanning the West and the East. 3