Left Perspectives on State Socialism II: The USSR and the Creation of Cold War International Spaces

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

"Internationalism” has been one of the guiding principles of Soviet foreign policy. Generally defined as a revolutionary idea of how to fight bourgeois nationalism, it has, in fact, been an ideological concept which proved to be malleable according to prevailing political aspirations. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, “transnationalism”, on the other hand, has been used, albeit ill-defined, to describe processes which surpassed national borders, thus challenging the limited perspective of methodological nationalism. While several international agreements on Antarctica, outer space, and scientific exchange have been hailed as pathbreaking achievements which helped to transcend Cold War thinking, they each remain phenomena which are limited by their own peculiarities.
This panel asks how state socialist actors engaged in the negotiation of the above-mentioned cooperative regimes after World War II and why specific localities were more suitable for internationalization and transnational cooperation than others. Although outwardly emphasizing their struggle against the imperialism of the capitalist world, Soviet diplomats and scientists often acted in unison with their Western counterparts. As the papers in this panel show, internationalism was never absolute and historical contingency played an important role in creating transnational situations instead of congruent entities. In our times of renationalization, the emphasis on the progressive rather than the perfective, last but not least, might help us to understand the context of Russia’s current policies in these areas.

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Papers

• From Open Skies to Orbits of Collaboration - Darina Volf, Ludwig-Maximilians-U Munich (Germany)

• Internationalization and Its Limits: The Negotiation of the Antarctic Treaty - Elias Angele, U of Bremen (Germany)

• The Land of Tomorrow: Exporting Scientific Siberia to the United States (1975) - Ksenia Tatarchenko, Singapore Management U (Singapore)

Discussant

• Pey-Yi Chu, Pomona College