Beyond Moscow: Eastern Europeans vis-à-vis the Liberation Movements in the Global South

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The topic of the engagement of Eastern European satellite states and societies in the Cold War-era competition between the Soviet and Western blocs for the hearts and souls of the “downtrodden” has enjoyed increasing popularity among scholars. Przemysław Gasztold and Christopher Lash, among others, analyze the important role played by Eastern European diplomats and military intelligence in supporting the liberation movements in the Global South. Likewise, Matthieu Gillabert, Zoltán Ginelli, and James Mark, among others, analyze the cultural dynamics between these white nations without an official colonial past on the one hand, and Africa and Asia, on the other. Many underline that Polish, Hungarian, or Czechoslovak attitudes toward colonialism did not necessarily follow the ideological prescriptions of the Soviet Union, nor did they fit neatly with Western European racist policies. Our panel builds on this existing scholarship to further complicate the picture of Eastern European engagement in the Global South. Whereas historians such as Natalia Telepneva have focused on Moscow as the center from which the “solidarity” with the Global South emanated, our papers focus on the specific actions and attitudes of state and non-state actors in the satellite states and in Africa. Piotr Puchalski will discuss the Polish settlers in southeast Africa after World War II as a group independent of the communist state. Mikuláš Pešta will reframe the history of the NGOs based in the satellite states and oriented toward the Global South. Finally, Anna-Marie Kroupová will analyze the Czechoslovak anti-colonial exhibitions staged in the 1950s and 1960s. Finally, Zoltán Ginelli’s paper will present a novel global history of how Hungarian communists and anti-communists both raced for anti-colonial recognition in the Third World in the early Cold War.

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Chair

• Ben Dew, Coventry U (UK)

Papers

• Settling with the Tide: Polish Settlers and Decolonization in Southeast Africa after World War II - Piotr Puchalski, U of the National Education Commission, Krakow (Poland)

• Transnational Networks and Anti-Colonial Production of 'Democratic' International NGOs - Mikuláš Pešta, Charles U / Institute of Contemporary History CAS (Czech Republic)

• Czechoslovak Exhibitions in the Cold War Era: Decolonization versus Imperial Legacies, 1950s-1960s - Anna-Marie Kroupová, U of Vienna (Austria)

Discussant

• Sarah Ellen Zarrow, Western Washington U