“Onward! No Retreat!”: The Matters & Memory of Asia’s Conversations with Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War II

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

While the Cold War superpowers busied themselves with partitions and proxies, small, non-aligned, and newly independent states started conversations of a different kind. Rather than abiding by the East-West logic of the Cold War, smaller states worked around, within, and despite this largely imagined reality. This panel will explore how countries throughout Asia negotiated the Cold War between 1945 and 1991 by relying on political, economic, and cultural partnerships with Central and Eastern European countries. These ties to Central and Eastern Europe did not always come through straightforward diplomatic avenues—sports, highly competitive living standards races, postwar reconstructions, and environmental concerns also helped solidify these international collaborations. This panel will also examine how these Cold War alliances are remembered today—from Josep Broz Tito Boulevard in Phnom Penh to Nehru Street in Belgrade and every avenue in between. How are official and “unofficial” memories of this Cold War outreach used today? Comprising a wide range of scholarly voices covering multiple countries, perspectives, and approaches, the panel will feature the yet-untold conversations between Central and Eastern Europe and Asia’s non-aligned forces during the Cold War and how those conversations are remembered today.

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Chair

• Ron Leonhardt, Missouri State U

Papers

• Permutations of Feminist Solidarity in Cold War Cambodia - Trude Jacobsen Gidaszewski, Northern Illinois U

• Electrification as Decolonization: The Kirirom I Hydroelectric Station and Yugoslav-Cambodian Relations in the Cold War, 1956-1970 - Thomas David Brown, Northern Illinois U

• Driving the West Germans Up the Wall: The Transformation of Cambodian-East German (GDR) Relations into an International Crisis, 1955-1970 - Ron Leonhardt, Missouri State U

• Memory and Atonement: East Germany and Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge - Court Hansen, Northern Illinois U

Discussant

• Milorad Lazic, George Washington U