The Cold War began in Europe in the mid-1940s and ended there in 1989. Notions of a “global Cold War” are useful in describing the wide impact and scope of the East-West divide after World War II, but first and foremost the Cold War was about the standoff in Europe. The Soviet Union established a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe in the mid-1940s that later became institutionalized in the Warsaw Pact, an organization that was offset by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) led by the United States. The fundamental division of Europe persisted for forty years, coming to an end only when Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe dissolved. Imposing, Maintaining, and Tearing Open the Iron Curtain: The Cold War and East-Central Europe, 1945–1989, edited by Mark Kramer and Vít Smetana, consists of cutting-edge essays by distinguished experts who discuss the Cold War in Europe from beginning to end, with a particular focus on the countries that were behind the iron curtain. The contributors take account of structural conditions that helped generate the Cold War schism in Europe, but they also ascribe agency to local actors as well as to the superpowers. The chapters dealing with the end of the Cold War in Europe explain not only why it ended but also why the events leading to that outcome occurred almost entirely peacefully.

Imposing, Maintaining, and Tearing Open the Iron Curtain, edited by Mark Kramer and Vít Smetana, consists of cutting-edge essays by distinguished experts who discuss the Cold War in Europe from beginning to end, with a particular focus on the countries that were behind the iron curtain.

This book examines Soviet agriculture in post-1945 Hungary. It demonstrates how the agrarian lobby, a development following the 1956 revolution, led to contact with the West which allowed for the creation of an effective agricultural system. The author argues that this ‘Hungarian agricultural miracle,’ a hybrid of American technology and Soviet structures, was fundamental to the success of Hungarian collectivization.

The KGB, Russian Academic Imperialism, Ukraine, and Western Academia, 1946-2024 is a study of Soviet and Russian intelligence operations against the centers for Soviet studies in North American academia. Using recently opened archival KGB and US intelligence documents, memoirs, and personal interviews with former KGB officers in post-Soviet Ukraine, this book analyzes the Soviet strategy of "using their enemies" for promoting their own political interests, especially directed at the problems of Ukrainian nationalism and independence. This volume investigates KGB operations establishing a foothold within the American Slavic studies community during the Cold War. The KGB, and their current successors the Russian FSB, use Russian emigrants and academics to promote pro-Kremlin and pro-Putin myths within North American research institutes. Special attention is paid to the historical roots of contemporary Russian intelligence operations targeting American-Russian academics and promoting Russian state interests in the ongoing war against Ukraine.

During World War II, London experienced not just the Blitz and the arrival of continental refugees, but also an influx of displaced foreign governments. Drawing together renowned historians from nine countries—the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia—this book explores life in exile as experienced by the governments of Czechoslovakia and other occupied nations who found refuge in the British capital. Through new archival research and fresh historical interpretations, chapters delve into common characteristics and differences in the origin and structure of the individual governments-in-exile in an attempt to explain how they dealt with pressing social and economic problems at home while abroad; how they were able to influence crucial allied diplomatic negotiations; the relative importance of armies, strategic commodities, and equipment that particular governments-in-exile were able to offer to the Allied war effort; important wartime propaganda; and early preparations for addressing postwar minority issues.

This collection of thirteen essays examines reactions in Eastern Europe to the Prague Spring and Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Countries covered include the Soviet Union and specific Soviet republics (Ukraine, Moldavia, the Baltic States), together with two chapters on Czechoslovakia and one each on East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia and Albania. The individual contributions explain why most of these communist regimes opposed Alexander Dubček’s reforms and supported the Soviet-led military intervention in August 1968, and why some stood apart. They also explore public reactions in Eastern Europe to the events of 1968, including instances of popular opposition to the crushing of the Prague Spring, expressions of loyalty to Soviet-style socialism, and cases of indifference or uncertainty. Among the many complex legacies of the East European ‘1968’ was the development of new ways of thinking about regional identity, state borders, de-Stalinisation and the burdens of the past.

This edited book fills a void in the existing research concerning anti-communist movements in Central and Eastern Europe, outlining the linguistic implications of the cultural, social and political metamorphoses brought about by the (change of) regime. The authors included in this volume approach the topic from a variety of perspectives, but, ultimately, focus on language seen as a fundamental tool for simultaneously subjugating and liberating, concealing and revealing truth, discouraging dissidence and fostering revolt. Readers are invited to discover the linguistic implications of the many shapes and forms that the 1989 anti-communist revolutions took. Equally interesting are the investigations of the revolution aftermath, in the first years of transition to democracy. Perceived as a whole throughout the Cold War (1947-1991), the so-called "Eastern Bloc" managed to reveal its heterogeneity, the singularity of each of its comprising states and the multitude of its internal contrasts, most vividly perhaps, in the manifold manifestations of the 1989 anti-communist fight. This book will be of interest to academics and researchers from various fields, including history, (socio)linguistics, political studies, and conflict studies.

This unique volume examines how and to what extent former victims of Stalinist terror from across the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were received, reintegrated and rehabilitated following the mass releases from prisons and labour camps which came in the wake of Stalin's death in 1953 and Khrushchev's reforms in the subsequent decade.

Neutrality serves different purposes during times of war and peace. ‘Notions of Neutralities’ portrays those historical challenges that neutrals faced, and are still facing, to maintain some form of economic stability and political order as chaos and wars rage. Neutrals are exposed to existential issues and questions of civil-society, international politics, and morality, in a world defiant to principles of universal peace. Every age has its own armed conflicts and while the questions they raise are often the same, the answers are different because the international word order changes. Is neutrality justifiable even when the humanity of civilization is at risk as in the Second World War or the wars of the post-Cold War era? Can those who refuse the call to arms still act by providing humanitarian services to contain the impact of war or, on the contrary, are neutrals shut-off from global politics – mere weaklings that “suffer what they must?" This book addresses such questions through an interdisciplinary scholarship by some of the world’s foremost experts on neutrality. Twelve chapters tackle different but profound aspects of the concept over a span of five hundred years. They succinctly show the evolution of international norms in the context of war and peace. What is more, the essays portray fundamental categories of thinking about a variety of neutralities that the international system has produced in the past and present. The authors discuss the complexities of neutrality, providing a new and refreshing understanding of international relations and security for the past as well as for the multipolar world of the twenty-first century.

Countless studies have assessed the dramatic reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, but their analysis of the impact on European communism has focused overwhelmingly on the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc nations. This ambitious collection takes a much broader view, reconstructing and evaluating the historical trajectories of glasnost and perestroika on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Moving beyond domestic politics and foreign relations narrowly defined, the research gathered here constitutes a transnational survey of these reforms’ collective impact, showing how they were variably received and implemented, and how they shaped the prospects for “proletarian internationalism” in diverse political contexts.