The Making of the West German Borderlands, 1945–1955

2019 ◽  
pp. 13-52
Author(s):  
Astrid M. Eckert
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
The West ◽  
Demarcation Line ◽  
Economic Miracle ◽  
Border Regions ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter explores the economic consequences of the early inter-German border and introduces the economic heterogeneity of the borderlands through snapshots of four localities along the demarcation line. As the tightening demarcation made itself felt, a coalition of borderland advocates pressured the federal government to help prevent their regions from turning into economic backwaters. These lobbying efforts revealed that borderland residents cared less about living in the shadow of the Iron Curtain than about living in the shadow of the “economic miracle” to their west. In their pitch for state aid, borderland advocates declared their regions to be economically, socially, and politically more vulnerable as a result of the Cold War than regions that had “merely” been damaged by the recent war. Their efforts yielded the “zonal borderland aid” program that soon became an integral part of the border regions’ economic and cultural life.

The East of the West

2019 ◽  
pp. 53-84
Author(s):  
Astrid M. Eckert
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
The West ◽  
Government Program ◽  
Border Regions ◽  
Economic Aid ◽  
History Of ◽  
Economic Capacity

This chapter investigates the history of “zonal borderland aid,” a program devised to support the West German border regions. It analyzes the strategies that borderland advocates deployed to entrench this government program for good. By depicting their regions as victimized by the Iron Curtain, they inadvertently generated the perception that the borderlands were backward. Pushing beyond 1990, the chapter addresses the economic consequences of the fall of the border and the widespread hope that the erstwhile periphery would turn into the new center of Germany and Europe. The borderlands became the places where the postunification “cotransformation” was instantly felt. The toolkit of economic aid that had been employed to prop up the borderlands now moved a few miles across the former border: “zonal borderland aid” turned into Reconstruction East, the program charged with rebuilding the economic capacity of former East Germany along capitalist lines.

scholarly journals Taking Back Europe in Valdas Papievis’s Novels

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 316-333
Author(s):  
Aušra Jurgutienė
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Intermediate State ◽  
Human Life ◽  
European Identity ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
National Environment ◽  
Western European ◽  
The Cold War

The novels of contemporary Lithuanian writer Valdas Papievis Eiti (To Go) and Odilė, arba oro uostų vienatvė (Odile, or the Solitude of Airports) – are two of the most successful variants of Lithuanian literature elicited by globalisation and the end of the Cold War. Not only because after the fall of the Iron Curtain that divided the West and the East and the declaration of Lithuania’s independence the author now lives and writes in Paris, but also due to the fact that his novels written in Lithuanian and describing contemporary Paris and Provence create topical and artistically mature narratives about the newest transformations of the European identity into an intermediate state. The article discusses the author’s uniquely romanticized tradition of existen tialism and emphasises the moments of Lithuanian and French communi ca tion that establish the three main motifs of an individual’s migration: home / to go / solitude, refining their existential and aesthetic meanings. The novels remind the reader that the forgotten natural and cosmic dimension of a human life is of no less importance than the social, historical and national environment determining it. The novels erase the ancient boundaries between the Eastern and Western European stereotypes; therefore, their French and Lithuanian origins are not noticeably in conflict, rather they merge into a common European memory, marked by sadness and disquietude.

NATO in Balkan’s Late Twenties Tide

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 135
Author(s):  
Xhavit Sadrijaj
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Foreign Minister ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The Cold War

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.

Islam and the West: Coexistence or Clash?

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 363-374
Author(s):  
Noor Mohammad Osmani ◽  
Tawfique Al-Mubarak
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
The West ◽  
Comprehensive Review ◽  
The World ◽  
Islamic Civilization ◽  
The Cold War

Samuel Huntington (1927-2008) claimed that there would be seven eight civilizations ruling over the world in the coming centuries, thus resulting a possible clash among them. The West faces the greatest challenge from the Islamic civilization, as he claimed. Beginning from the Cold-War, the Western civilization became dominant in reality over other cultures creating an invisible division between the West and the rest. The main purpose of this research is to examine the perceived clash between the Western and Islamic Civilization and the criteria that lead a civilization to precede others. The research would conduct a comprehensive review of available literatures from both Islamic and Western perspectives, analyze historical facts and data and provide a critical evaluation. This paper argues that there is no such a strong reason that should lead to any clash between the West and Islam; rather, there are many good reasons that may lead to a peaceful coexistence and cultural tolerance among civilizations

‘There shall be no musical servitude’: Towards a Multitudinous Shostakovich in the West

2020 ◽  
Vol 145 (2) ◽  
pp. 495-505
Author(s):  
EIRINI DIAMANTOULI
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War

Ideologically motivated attempts to elucidate Shostakovich’s political views and to determine whether and how they may be coded into his compositions have come to characterize the Western reception of the composer’s works since his death in 1975. Fuelled by the political oppositions of the cold war, Shostakovich’s posthumous reputation in the West has been largely shaped by two conflicting perspectives. These have positioned him on the one hand as a secret dissident, bent and broken under the unbearable strain of totalitarianism, made heroic through his veiled musical resistance to Communism; and on the other hand as a composer compromised by his capitulation to the regime – represented in an anachronistic musical style. Both perspectives surrender Shostakovich and his music to a crude oversimplification driven by vested political interests. Western listeners thus conditioned are primed to hear either the coded dissidence of a tragic victim of Communist brutality or the sinister submission of a ‘loyal son of the Communist Party’.1 For those prepared to accept Shostakovich as a ‘tragic victim’, the publication of his purported memoirs in 1979, ‘as related to and edited by’ the author Solomon Volkov, presents a tantalizing conclusion: bitterly yet discreetly scornful of the Stalinist regime, Shostakovich was indeed a secret dissident and this dissidence was made tangible in his music.

Lukewarm Neutrality in a Cold War? The Case of Austria

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 36-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erwin A. Schmidl
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Military Occupation ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Other Orientation ◽  
Over Time

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.

On polarization

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian James Baer
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Translation Theory ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
Master Narratives ◽  
Distinct State ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract The ideological incommensurability of the worldviews or master narratives represented by the two opposing superpowers during the Cold War and embodied in the image of an impenetrable iron curtain gave particular salience to translation theory while also questioning the very possibility of translation. At the same time, the neoimperialist projects of the two superpowers produced startlingly similar approaches to the instrumentalization of translation as a vehicle for propaganda and diplomacy. Presenting polarization as a distinct state of semiosis, the effects of which are highly unpredictable, this article explores the various ways in which the radical polarization of the Cold War shaped the theory and practice of translation both within and across the ideological divide. Plotting the entanglements of the light and dark sides of translation during this time challenges traditional histories of the field that construe the period as one of progress and liberation.

The Doppelgänger and his Master

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kuba Mikurda
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
Late Modernity ◽  
Repressed Memory ◽  
Current State ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Two Sides

A performative introduction, by Kuba Mikurda, to Johan Grimonprez’s Double Take (2009). Based on the themes of duality, playing for both sides, and doppelgänger fantasy, the tells not only the tale of Alfred Hitchcock’ lifelong fascination with such motifs, but also of the Cold War (and its influence on our contemporaneity) as a Hitchcock-esque reality. Using archive footage of Alfred Hichcock Presents, where the author of Psycho impersonates various alternative versions of himself, Grimonprez shows that the two sides of the Iron Curtain are actually two sides of the same coin – perfect mirror images of its double. The same is true for Cold War paranoia, the returning phantom of a global conflict, or atom war – it is ultimately difficult to say whether the films of the master of suspense, such as Birds and North by Northwest are its manifestation or is it maybe that in the current state of late modernity, our experience of the world took on the features of a Hitchcock film. Grimonprez – an artist known for gallery projects and theoretical interests, offers a story of the duplexity of a divided world – a slightly histo/erical one and full of distance and games. All the same, as Karen Beckmann reminds us, “the sameness of a twin is based on the repressed memory of division, breakage, and a sudden partition”.

Western welfare states watched from the East during the Cold War: condemnation, competition, and creative learning

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomasz Inglot
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
The West ◽  
Creative Learning ◽  
The Cold War

This paper examines international influences of the Western welfare state on social policy ideas, institutions and reforms in the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. It identifies three types of Eastern reactions to or interactions with the West: “condemnation” of various “bourgeois” conceptions of social welfare; “competition” or increased attention to redistribution and social needs of the population stemming from the demonstrable successes of Western welfare states; and “creative learning” or implicit acknowledgment that every industrial society, including the Soviet style centrally planned economies, had to adopt at least some elements of modernized social welfare models or policy originally developed in the West. Paradoxically, first the explicit and later more implicit rejection of the Western welfare state, including the social-democratic and various “third way” models, eventually led to the rise of neoliberal and anti-welfare attitudes among many Eastern social policy reformers during the last decade of communist rule and beyond, after 1989.

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