The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History

2012 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social History ◽  
European History ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Institutional Economic ◽  
Postwar Europe ◽  
Current Affairs ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
The Cold War

The postwar period is no longer current affairs but is becoming the recent past. As such, it is increasingly attracting the attentions of historians. Whilst the Cold War has long been a mainstay of political science and contemporary history, recent research approaches postwar Europe in many different ways, all of which are represented in this volume. As well as diplomatic, political, institutional, economic, and social history, this book contains articles that approach the past through the lenses of gender, espionage, art and architecture, technology, agriculture, heritage, post colonialism, memory, and generational change, and shows how the history of postwar Europe can be enriched by looking to disciplines such as anthropology and philosophy. It covers all of Europe, with a notable focus on Eastern Europe. Including subjects as diverse as the meaning of ‘Europe’ and European identity, southern Europe after dictatorship, the cultural meanings of the bomb, the 1968 student uprisings, immigration, Americanisation, welfare, leisure, decolonisation, the Wars of Yugoslav Succession, and coming to terms with the Nazi past, the thirty-five essays in this book present a coverage of postwar European history that offers far more than the standard Cold War framework.

National Internationalists: British and West German Protests against Nuclear Weapons, the Politics of Transnational Communications and the Social History of the Cold War, 1957–1964

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 559-582 ◽  
Author(s):  
HOLGER NEHRING
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social History ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Traditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

This article examines the politics of communication between British and West German protesters against nuclear weapons in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The interpretation suggested here historicises the assumptions of ‘transnational history’ and shows the nationalist and internationalist dimensions of the protest movements' histories to be inextricably connected. Both movements related their own aims to global and international problems. Yet they continued to observe the world from their individual perspectives: national, regional and local forms thus remained important. By illuminating the interaction between political traditions, social developments and international relations in shaping important political movements within two European societies, this article can provide one element of a new connective social history of the cold war.

Introduction: The Korean War in Britain

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Grace Huxford
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social History ◽  
Korean War ◽  
British History ◽  
History Writing ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

This introduction first gives an overview of Korean War historiography alongside a summary of the war itself, before exploring the position of the Korean War and the Cold War in British history-writing. It highlights how selfhood and citizenship have emerged as growing categories of analysis in Cold War studies and argues why it is important to consider them in the context of post-1945 Britain. It closes by exploring the challenges and possibilities of writing the social history of warfare and bringing domestic and military ‘spheres’ together in a meaningful way.

Epilogue

2019 ◽  
pp. 135-142
Author(s):  
Jane Caplan
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
German History ◽  
The Core ◽  
German States ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
Core Questions ◽  
The Cold War

The Epilogue considers the core questions raised in earlier chapters: the place of National Socialism in German history and what it meant to be ‘German’ after the defeat of Nazism. Trials of leading figures in the regime in 1945–9 were a first step, but addressing responsibility for Nazi crimes was a prolonged and uneven process. How Germans confronted the Nazi past was affected by the establishment of two separate German states in 1949, the Cold War, the unification of Germany in 1990, and the eventual development of an international culture of Holocaust.

Corporatism and the Social Democratic Moment: The Postwar Settlement, 1945–1973

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoff Eley
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Economic Downturn ◽  
Social Imaginaries ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Postwar Europe ◽  
The Social ◽  
Public Cultures ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Economic

Certain facts about postwar Europe seem self-evidently true. Undoubtedly the most salient was the division of Europe and the political, economic, social, and cultural antinomies that separated western capitalism from Soviet-style communism in the overarching context of the Cold War. If the Cold War itself stretched across four decades, from the heightening of international tensions in 1947–1948 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989–1991, the postwar settlement's reliable solidities had already been breaking apart in the 1970s. The global economic downturn of 1973–1974 ended the postwar boom, shelving its promises of permanent growth and continuously unfolding prosperity. In those terms, the core of the postwar settlement lies in the years 1947–1973. This article explores the single most striking particularity of the post-1945 settlement, namely the centrality acquired by organised labour for the polities, social imaginaries, and public cultures of postwar European societies. First, it discusses democracy as a cultural project during 1945–1968. The article then looks at corporatism and social democracy, and concludes by assessing patterns of stability in Europe during the postwar period.

The “kgb People,” Soviet Americanists and Soviet-American Academic Exchanges, 1958–1985

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergei Zhuk
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social History ◽  
American Studies ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
American Academic

Using various case studies – from Oleg Kalugin to Grigorii Sevostianov and Nikolai Sivachev in Russia, and Askold Shlepakov in Ukraine, this article examines different instrumental functions of the KGB people among Soviet Americanists, specialists in the US history, politics, literature and films. It focuses on the KGB influences in the field of American studies in the Soviet Union since the beginning of Soviet-us academic exchanges programs in 1958 till the beginning of perestroika. This article is a part of the larger project about cultural and social history of Soviet Americanists during the Cold War.

Iran's Karaj Dam Affair: Emerging Mass Consumerism, the Politics of Promise, and the Cold War in the Third World

2012 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 612-643 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cyrus Schayegh
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social History ◽  
Third World ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Third World Development ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
World Development ◽  
The U.S

AbstractThis paper examines two intertwined processes that shaped post-war Tehran. One was a ravenous demand for electricity, part of a surge in popular expectations for consumer goods and higher standards of living. The other was the construction of the Karaj Dam to meet that demand. Consumerist expectations, especially among Tehran's bourgeoning middle classes, developed together with a West-centered but ultimately global maturation of mass consumer culture, with the cultural Cold War, and with the shaky post-1953 regime's politics of promising higher living standards. The Karaj Dam became possible when that regime frightened its patron—the U.S. administration that dreaded Soviet influence—into helping pay for the project despite reservations in the U.S. Congress and among technical specialists. The dam was not simply a top-down state (or U.S.) project—it was also caused by and in that sense belonged to Tehranis. I draw on archival and published primary sources, images, and secondary literature to tell a story of society-state and domestic-global interactions that characterized many Third World countries. This paper builds on past studies of relationships between the Cold War and Third World development, and of the transnational history of development/modernization. But it transcends their focus on elites, and that of other scholars’ on subaltern victims, and argues that analyses of Third World development and the Cold War must include the middle classes and, conceptually, social history.

scholarly journals Diplomatic Wives, Cultures of Dress and Brita Kekkonen

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 96-106
Author(s):  
Anna Niiranen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Personal History ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Postdoctoral Research ◽  
The Cold War

In this article, I discuss the private dress collection of Brita Kekkonen (1927–2013), a diplomatic wife, who was a very well-known figure in Finland during the period of the Cold War. Brita Kekkonen was also a very talented dressmaker and a very fashionable figure in diplomatic circles. Some eighty outfits made by Brita Kekkonen have survived to this day, in addition to her voluminous pattern collection, containing more than 1,000 patterns from several decades. The aim of my new postdoctoral research project is to identify Brita Kekkonen’s dresses and examine their use, politico-cultural meanings and design in the context of the Cold War, diplomatic etiquette and Kekkonen’s own personal history.

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