Animation behind the iron curtain: a guide to animated films from Russia and eastern bloc countries during the Cold War era

Author(s):  
Olga Blackledge
2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
László Zentai ◽  
Gábor Gercsák

Abstract. Cartography of the Cold War era was very characteristic in the Eastern Bloc countries. The abnormal secrecy instructions forced by military cartographic authorities (following the Soviet advisors) influenced the making of all kinds of large- and medium-scale cartographic products for public use. Most of these maps were somehow distorted, although it was not easy to implement the technology of distortions developed by cartographers in the analogue map production era in the early 1960s. Tourist maps are expected to be created using topographic maps, but the access to classified topographic maps (both civilian and military) was limited for civilian users (even for civilian national mapping agencies, at least in the early years of the Cold War era). The tourist maps of this era were quite different from country to country in the Eastern Bloc, partly due to their cartographic traditions and to the relationships between the military and civilian cartography even influenced by the users’ demands.


Author(s):  
James Young

During the Cold War, the simplicity of the Air Intercept Missile (AIM)-9 Sidewinder, as well as its potential for growth, allowed it to continually adapt to the changing times. Whether destroying Communist aircraft to facilitate U.S. national security interests, deterring potential Eastern Bloc aggression in Europe, or allowing U.S. allies to seize air superiority during combat operations, the Sidewinder represents a ubiquitous element of airpower for Western interests. As such, it deserves to be recognized as a key component of the U.S. Cold War-era military technology and one of the nation’s greatest military investments.


Author(s):  
Roxana Verona

Roxana Verona’s piece is based on her own lived experience. Verona’s text is a testimony on life in Romania during the Cold War. In it, Verona underscores the importance—for beleaguered Romanians in a ‘forgotten’ Eastern bloc satellite—of ‘contact zones’ between East and West. For Verona and others, the French language, French literature, and French intellectuals served as one of the most vital of those grey zones between the capitalist and Communist worlds.


2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 180-203
Author(s):  
Friederike Kind-Kovács

In recent years, historians have slowly lost interest in depicting the Cold War as a unique ideological contest between the “real existing” socialist East and the capitalist West. In this spirit, this text examines the social practice of literary transfers, i.e., the exchange of literary works across borders. These transfers sought to physically restore an unraveled Europe that had come about as a result of the ideological and often personal division of Europe’s (and Germany’s) populations. Focusing on the practice of literary transfers across the Iron Curtain permits us to understand borders as symbolic spaces of the Cold War, although they had supposedly been hermetically sealed. Current research on opposition movements in Cold War Europe is still dominated by the widespread notion that oppositional phenomena in thegdrrepresent a research area distinct from other oppositional movements in the Eastern bloc. Possibly due to Germany’s singular dividedness, this perception has often led to individual studies of oppositional phenomena, especially in the literary field, in the formergdr, thereby obscuring parallels in Central and Eastern Europe. As a critical response, this text distances itself from the division of the Soviet bloc’s cultural history into irreconcilable geographical subareas. In doing so, it exemplifies literary transfers both across the German-German border as well as across the East-West Iron Curtain.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 135
Author(s):  
Xhavit Sadrijaj

NATO did not intervene in the Balkans to overcome Yugoslavia, or destroy it, but above all to avoid violence and to end discrimination. (Shimon Peres, the former Israeli foreign minister, winner of Nobel Prize for peace) NATO’s intervention in the Balkans is the most historic case of the alliance since its establishment. After the Cold War or the "Fall of the Iron Curtain" NATO somehow lost the sense of existing since its founding reason no longer existed. The events of the late twenties in the Balkans, strongly brought back the alliance proving the great need for its existence and defining dimensions and new concepts of security and safety for the alliance in those tangled international relations.


Author(s):  
Raymond A. Patton

The conclusion condenses the book’s argument that punk developed through networks that crossed all three worlds through intertwined phenomena of immigration, postmodernism, and globalization; that punks and societies’ reactions to it defied and subverted the fundamental assumptions and categories of the Cold War era; and that punk provoked a realignment away from sociopolitical, ideological categories and toward a new framework emphasizing identities as conservatives and progressives. It briefly examines the post-1989 punk scenes of the East and West; many punks felt as dissatisfied with the global neoliberal order as they were with the Cold War world and often joined the new antiglobalization movements of the East and West. It concludes with the example of Pussy Riot in Russia, which shows that punk retained its power to consolidate forces of reaction (Putin, the Orthodox Church, and conservative public opinion) and cultural progressives alike long after the end of the Cold War.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-191
Author(s):  
Eric Burton

AbstractFrom the late 1950s, Africans seeking higher education went to a rapidly increasing number of destinations, both within Africa and overseas. Based on multi-sited archival research and memoirs, this article shows how Africans forged and used new routes to gain access to higher education denied to them in their territories of origin, and in this way also shaped scholarship policies across the globe. Focusing on British-ruled territories in East Africa, the article establishes the importance of African intermediaries and independent countries as hubs of mobility. The agency of students and intermediaries, as well as official responses, are examined in three interconnected cases: the clandestine ‘Nile route’ from East Africa to Egypt and eastern Europe; the ‘airlifts’ from East Africa to North America; and the ‘exodus’ of African students from the Eastern bloc to western Europe. Although all of these routes were short-lived, they transformed official scholarship provisions, and significantly shaped the postcolonial period in the countries of origin.


2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 36-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erwin A. Schmidl

Geographically, Austria's position during the Cold War differed significantly from that of Switzerland or Sweden, let alone Ireland. Austria, like Finland, was situated along the Iron Curtain. In 1945, Austria was divided between East and West, and the Soviet Union hoped that the Austrian Communists could quickly gain power by largely democratic means. This effort failed, however, when the Communists lost decisively in the November 1945 elections. Over the next decade, Austria remained under Soviet and Western military occupation. The formal adoption of a neutral status for Austria in May 1955, when the Austrian State Treaty was signed, was a compromise needed to ensure the departure of Soviet forces from Austria. Although some other orientation might have been preferred, neutrality over time became firmly engrained in Austria's collective identity.


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