Eastern Bloc Research Articles

A city of newcomers: Migration and solidarity in the former East Germany

AbstractThis article examines how urban temporalities have come to alternately foster and hinder migrants' incorporation into the larger social body. It draws on ethnographic and archival research conducted in Eisenhüttenstadt, Germany, and focuses on the so‐called “migrant crisis” of 2015, which resonated with earlier migration histories in the region. When Eisenhüttenstadt was founded in 1950, nearly one‐third of its residents were naturalized East German citizens. Yet under the socialist regime, any acknowledgment of their migration background was expressly forbidden and perceived as a threat to Eastern Bloc geopolitical alliances. Around 2015, however, this history reemerged, first at the local cultural history museum and later, in public discourse. This article attends to the shifting positionality of migration histories within the context of the former East Germany, which was perceived as European in a global context but post‐socialist in a German context. In doing so, it reveals how tensions between individual and urban futurities influence solidarity, integration, and national belonging.

Az európai regionális integráció jövője. Kormányzási és elosztási dilemmák

The cornerstone of the global system, as well as the EU, is the principle of the sovereign equality of states. However, states are far from being equal. This paradox is one of the main obstacles to the smooth functioning of international organisations, including the EU. Sovereigntist critics of the EU pretend that national competencies are sacrificed in exchange for co-operation and joint governance at a larger scale. In reality, EU membership has widened the scope of member states’ sovereignty: they are better informed and can take part in decision-making at the European level. However, the EU’s decision-making power has weakened for two main reasons. First, EU competencies have been watered down: exclusive union competencies exist only in five sectors, in parallel with a large and growing number of mixed and shared competencies. As a result, EU decision-making tends towards intergovernmental methods, and consensus seeking opens the way for veto players. Second, after the end of the Cold War, in the 1990s, many new states were formed because of the dissolution of former federal structures. In place of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia 24 new states have taken form so far, 19 out of them Europeans, and the majority is attracted by the EU. The EU member states from the former eastern bloc which have Soviet-type political, economic, and social heritage, have ‘imported’ their unsolved – internal and external – conflicts into the EU. After the European elections in 2024 and the renewal of the European Parliament and the European Commission, those institution should undergo a ‘slimming diet’ and speed up decision-making by extending qualified majority voting. This is an absolute precondition of further enlargements.

Eastern Bloc Agents in West Germany

This paper highlights how contemporary archaeology can contribute to our knowledge of contemporary history, in a case where written sources no longer exist and any surviving protagonists either will not or cannot divulge what they know. Its focus is on a Soviet spy radio from the last years of the Cold War which was discovered during a recent archaeological excavation in Germany’s Rhineland. The radio was probably produced in 1987 and was soon afterwards concealed in woodland, most likely by someone working for Soviet military intelligence, the GRU. The findspot is close to various Cold War military installations involving nuclear weapons, and the radio would have enabled the swift transmission of military information into the Eastern Bloc that would have been useful in the event of war. As rare archaeological evidence of espionage, the radio can also help us to understand continuities between the Cold War and the present time.

Nazi Crimes, Max Merten and his Prosecution as Reflected in Greece and beyond

The prosecution of Max Merten (1911–1971), the only Nazi war criminal accused of Holocaust involvement in Greece, coincided not only with the start of the Greek-German negotiations on victim compensation but also with the Eichmann trial. In 1959, the Merten Case provoked a massive public backlash, both because of the gravity of his crimes and because of his impending extradition to West Germany. We argue that in the Cold War atmosphere, when the Merten Case attracted international attention, the actions of internal and external power elites in the West deliberately departed from the concept of transitional justice to use this murky affair to their political advantage. Rather than a fair trial, the aim was to obstruct it in the interests of good relations, political self-preservation, and gradual social amnesia about Greek complicity during the German occupation. In contrast, the Eastern Bloc fed the opposite narrative of rotten capitalism by building on its proclaimed struggle against fascism. By combining archival sources and newspaper coverage of the Merten Case on both sides of the East-West conflict, our article explores which mechanisms were mobilised in public and which incentives were carried out behind the scenes. This allows us to examine multidirectional attitudes in a geopolitical sense, with the main aim of showing the discursive imposition of disinformation operating (in)formally through the channels of political institutions during the Cold War.

История немецкого телевидения как социокультурного и дискурсивного феномена

Television is a global phenomenon with national peculiarities. This article introduces a chronological and comparative analysis of the development of television in West and East Germany. A systematic view of this phenomenon involves both technical and social aspects. From a technical innovation available to the privileged, it turned into a mass medium that performs an integrative function by shaping and broadcasting the current discourse. The research objective was to find out the specifics of television in Germany and correlate the global trends with the national context. The XX century erased the borders between such incompatible phenomena as dictatorship and democracy, and all these phenomena affected the content of TV shows, people’s attitude to television, its new genres, social functions, etc. The author revealed five stages in the development of German television. Stage I (late XIX century – 1945) was the age of technical discoveries, attempts at their practical implementation, and the early regular broadcasting during the period of National Socialism. Stage II (late 1940s – 1950s) marked the restoration of television broadcasting and the parallel development of television in the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. Stage III (1960s –1970s) clarified the institutional framework and social functions of television. Stage IV (1980s – mid-1990s) saw the emergence of new broadcasting technologies and commercial TV channels, as well as the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the reunification of Germany. Stage V (since 1990s) is connected with digitalization.

‘A New Prague Spring, but from Below?’ Socialist Dissent in the Last Soviet Generation and the Emergence of Solidarność in Poland, 1980–1981

This article examines the Young Socialists, a left-wing dissident circle of intellectuals from the last Soviet generation, and focuses on their contacts with Solidarność during 1980–81. These dissidents, located in Moscow and Minsk, interpreted the Polish strikes as the possible beginnings of a wider move to socialist reform in the Eastern Bloc. Using oral history and samizdat materials from the Russian and Polish archives and the former archives of Radio Free Europe, the article demonstrates how the Young Socialists’ interactions with Poland developed in the wider context of the transnational history of dissent in the Eastern Bloc at the turn of the 1980s. It argues that a combination of internationalist values and bloc-wide dissident solidarities caused socialist dissidents to view nationalist movements on the Soviet periphery and Eastern Europe as potential drivers of socialist reform on the eve of Perestroika.

The dangers of sharing knowledge with friends: the FSX Controversy and the use of US export controls against Japan in the 1980s and 1990s

ABSTRACT This article places the US–Japanese controversy over the co-development of the FSX jet fighter in the context of US debates about ‘economic security’. During the 1980s, this concept became the widely used shorthand for describing a new calculus of national security and foreign economic policy, closely linking defense economics, competitiveness in commercial global markets and the crucial role of dual-use technologies in both spheres. The article shows that the dangers of sharing dual-use know-how were at the heart of the US security concerns in the FSX case, prompting the US government to use export controls – during the Cold War the sharpest economic weapon against the Eastern bloc – against its close ally Japan.

From anti-colonialism to anti-imperialism: African student associations and activism in 1960s Italy

After the end of European colonial rule, the presence of university students from the newly independent countries increased on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Although the students were involved in political activities both in the Eastern bloc and in Western Germany, France and Great Britain, there is a gap in academic research on this involvement in the Italian case. This article offers the first reconstruction of African student activism in Italy in the 1960s, tracing the modalities of association and mapping the links of this activism with various Italian organisations, in particular anti-colonial student organisations and the Catholic Ufficio Centrale Studenti Esteri in Italia. The article shows that throughout the decade, the African students' interests shifted from anti-colonialism to anti-imperialism and that their associations underwent a process of radicalisation, partly linked to the concurrent transformations of the Italian student movement, and partly to developments in African politics.

Adopting or Dodging the Heroic Model: Professional Trajectories of Estonian Women Architects

The article focuses on gender-specific experiences of Estonian women architects in the late Soviet and post-Soviet Estonia. Architecture has been, and to a great extent still remains, a rather masculinist field, adhering to an image of heroic individualist creative genius and supporting a very demanding and uncompromising work culture. These preconceptions often make it complicated to forge different career paths or to appreciate alternative or more cooperational modes of practice. The article asks if and to what extent the unwritten rules and prejudices have affected Estonian women architects’ experiences in studying architecture, establishing their careers, combining the responsibilities of professional and private lives, and building up their image as (women) designers in a general sense. Based on in-depth interviews with 16 professional architects aged 33–92, the article also highlights the differences and similarities of practising architecture as a woman in the Soviet and post-Soviet social and economic contexts, mapping them onto findings of international feminist research in the context of both Western Europe and the former Eastern Bloc. Additionally, the article refers to the productive possibilities of oral history as a method to complement and challenge the conventional architecture historical writing as well as the intersubjective character of the narratives thus constructed.

“Like we would help brothers or sisters”? Practising Solidarity with Greek Civil War Refugees in Socialist Czechoslovakia and the GDR in the Shadow of World War II

AbstractThis article investigates the solidarity campaigns supporting refugees from the Greek Civil War (1946–1949) in post-war Czechoslovakia and the emerging German Democratic Republic. Framed as an important bridge between the interwar and later Cold War forms of socialist internationalism, this case sheds light on its transitory character, revealing the narrative shift from anti-fascist to anti-imperialist contexts and the increasingly institutionalized and ritualized solidarity. Thus, not only was practising solidarity already an integral part of post-war socialist regimes, but it also served a variety of functions, contributing to the legitimization and identity of the Eastern bloc. Based on archival documents and press, the article uncovers the deployment of analogical institutional structures employed by both states, thus opening up the sphere of interaction with their citizens, mobilized to become involved in various ways. The two countries, however, departed from different positions, dealing with opposing legacies of the wartime experience, which influenced the motivations employed in their campaigns. Entangled in discourses of guilt, heroism, and victimhood, yet aligned under the proclaimed values of socialist brotherhood and anti-fascism, building internationalist solidarity in both countries worked alongside and even boosted attempts to overcome the obstacle of the Nazi past, both internally and in their mutual relationship. This article thus contributes to a better understanding of how internationalist solidarity functioned as a platform to build bridges – not only towards the “South”, but also within the Eastern bloc.

“Side by Side with Fighting Nations”: Making the New Culture of Pro-African Solidarity in the Campaigns of the Czechoslovak Committee for Solidarity with African and Asian Peoples

AbstractThe article analyses the solidarity campaigns organized by the Czechoslovak Committee for Solidarity with African and Asian Peoples between the 1960s and 1980s. It situates the Czechoslovak solidarity towards African countries in the wider framework of the solidarity politics of the Eastern bloc and points out differences as well as similarities. Although the Czechoslovak Solidarity Committee was one of the first such committees to be founded in Eastern Europe, in the 1960s its official as well as public commitment to internationalist principles was modest compared with those of solidarity movements elsewhere in the bloc. However, the solidarity campaigns with African liberation movements intensified in the early 1970s. The campaigns in this period were marked by strong national symbolism, which drew on historical parallels between the African and Czechoslovak struggles for independence. The everyday internationalism in this case filled the public space with images of shared suffering, inferiority, and occupation, through which Czechoslovak citizens made sense of their historical role in the world. The article argues that this “nationalization” of official solidarity campaigns helped to embed the victimization narratives that survived the Velvet Revolution and that, in the 1990s, became a basis for new Czech and Slovak political identification.

The Albanian Righteous: a case of missing information

ABSTRACT The first Albanian Righteous Among the Nations was recognized only in 1987, 24 years after the programmme's birth - one of the longest periods before the first recognition by Yad Vashem's database. Rescue took many forms and rescuers came from different social classes, professions and religions. The vast majority of the rescued were refugees arriving in 1940-43, when the country was under fascist occupation. The information about Albanian rescuers during the Holocaust is still incomplete, mostly due to the country's decades-long extreme isolation after World War II. Albania experienced the most severe dictatorship and repression in Europe. After the official recognition of the state of Israel in 1949, the Albanian government froze bilateral relations until the 1990s. During the communist period, several scholars from “enemy countries” requested information regarding the Jewish community and other important issues, but the authorities did never respond. In addition, the exchange of information between the rescuers and the rescued was impossible. Albania was the only Eastern Bloc state that did never establish diplomatic ties with Israel and other so-called revisionist countries.

Doğu Bloku Ekseninden Avrupa Birliği'ne Üye Olan Ülkelerde Ekonomik Değişim

İkinci Dünya Savaşı'nın sona ermesiyle birlikte dünyada ekonomi ve siyaset alanında değişimler başlamıştır. 1950’li yıllardan sonra dünya ekonomisi ve siyaseti iki kutuplu hale dönüşmüştür. Bu kutuplar kapitalist ve sosyalist sistemlerden oluşmuştur. Sosyalist sisteme Sovyetler Birliği öncülük yaparken, kapitalist sisteme ise ABD öncülük yapmıştır. Sovyetler Birliği’nin öncülük yaptığı sistem Doğu Bloku ve Bloka üye ülkeleri de kapsamaktadır. Doğu Bloku varlığı yaklaşık 40 yıl sürmüş, 1991 yılı sonunda Sovyetler Birliği’nin dağılmasıyla sona ermiştir. Gelişmiş Batı ülkeleri ve kapitalist sistemle rekabet edemeyen Blok, 1980’li yılların sonunda dağılma sürecine girmiştir. Doğu Blokunun dağılması sosyalist veya merkezi kumanda ekonomik sistemin son bulmasına neden olmuştur. Eski Doğu Blokuna üye olan ülkeler piyasa ekonomisine geçme kararı almışlardır. Merkezi ve Doğu Avrupa’da yer alan eski Doğu Bloku ülkeler kısa sürede piyasa ekonomisine geçiş reformlarını başarıyla tamamlamışlardır. Netice olarak Avrupa Birliği (AB) ve NATO gibi önemli kuruluşlara üye olmuşlardır. Günümüzde eski Doğu Bloku ülkeleri AB’nin ekonomi adına önemli bir parçasını oluşturmaktadır. Bu çalışmada, bir zamanlar merkezi planlı ekonomik sistem ile yönetilen, sistemin dağılmasıyla piyasa ekonomisine geçiş kararı alan bazı ülkelerin ekonomileri incelenmiştir. Piyasa ekonomisine geçiş sonrasında AB’ye entegre olan bu ülkelerin ekonomilerindeki değişim ele alınmış ve yorumlanmıştır. Çalışma sonucunda, Avrupa Birliğine üye olan eski Doğu Bloku ülkelerin makroekonomik yapılarındaki önemli değişimlerin olduğu bulguları elde edilmiştir.

Universalism and particularism in the recommendations of the nobel prize for science

From the viewpoints of universalism and particularism, this paper investigates the process of recommendation by focusing on peer review for the Nobel Prize for Science from 1901 to 1970. The results indicate that self-recommendation practices are routine, especially in developed countries, and that the recommendation network is fundamentally built on mutually beneficial relationships between countries. The analysis also reveals that political, economic, military, biological, and colonial factors irrelevant to scientific performance impact the recommendations. During the study period, the Cold War evoked severe tensions between the Western and Eastern Blocs and influenced recommendations on each side; political and military factors also played a role. The main findings imply apparent evidence for particularism, indicating the presence of bias in the recommendation process. This paper provides suggestions for improvement of the selection process for the Nobel Committee.

Inside the Labyrinth. The Post-Communist Novel Between Anti-Communism and Nostalgia

ABSTRACT The article tries to map the perspectives of the post-communist East on its own communist past, as envisioned by four writers and their relevant novels: the Michal Ajvaz (The Other City, 1993), Mircea Cărtărescu (Blinding, 1996), the David Albahari (Leeches, 2006), the Olga Tokarczuk (Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, 2009). I argue that these novels – which take the form of mysteries and/or draw on conspiracy theories – resort to specific genre tropes in their attempt to render in an allegorical code the deficits in the cognitive mapping of the post-communist period. This blank spot concerns the project of post-communism as an evasive totality which the East has been constantly trying to grasp, after being confined in the cognitive labyrinth of the neoliberal capitalism that has predominated since the demise of communism in central Europe in 1989. My study relies on Fredric Jameson’s view that conspiracy theories are indicative of deficiencies of cognitive mappings. Subsequently, I analyse the four novels in a World Literature frame. These terms help in interpreting the ways in which the literatures of the former Eastern Bloc relate to their own past, but also to the new planetary conscience pushed forward by neoliberal capitalism.

Three decades of economic changes of rural Slovakia

The economy has been developing exceptionally dynamically in recent decades. In the Central European countries of the former Eastern Bloc, the transformation from a centrally planned to a market economy contributed to these dynamics after 1989. Despite a large number of analyses at the national level or in particular cities, the impact of this development on rural areas has yet to be researched. This study aims to contribute to filling this gap. Its goal is to estimate and assess the development of the number, spatial distribution, and sectoral structure of jobs in the Slovak rural areas over the period 1991-2021. The study uses two approaches to the definition of rural municipalities and explores spatial differentiation of changes. Analysing data on the economically active population and commuting to work, both based on sectoral structure, provides a reliable basis for making qualified estimates regarding the quantity and composition of jobs, even at the local level. The study confirms that municipalities considered rural administratively showed neutral or positive changes in the number of jobs and strong shift from agricultural to diversified rural economy. However, positive changes were mainly driven by suburban areas. When excluding them from consideration, rural municipalities show a rapid decline in the number of jobs and changes in the sectoral structure driven mainly by the decrease in agricultural jobs.

Smokescreens and Smear Campaigns: The Dutch Communist Party in Times of Crisis

This article seeks to establish how different crises in the Eastern Bloc affected the political standpoints of the Communist Party of the Netherlands, Communistische Partij Nederland (CPN), through an analysis of publications in affiliated party magazines between 1953 and 1981. This analysis is conducted within a framework consisting of party change theories and the literature about Eurocommunism as a Europe-wide phenomenon. The analysis indicates that the CPN went from supporting military interventions in Germany, Poznan, and Hungary to condemning them in Czechoslovakia, initially while maintaining ideological distance from political opponents in the Netherlands. This changed in 1981, when the CPN seemingly without restraint joined the mainstream political parties in condemning the introduction of martial law in Poland and the Socialistische Partij (SP), the Socialist Party of the Netherlands, took over the CPN’s position as a political outsider. This indicated a shift in the party’s stance from a niche to a mainstream positioning against Moscow.

“We know that you were not born a scoundrel...”. János Kádár interrogating László Rajk, 1949

In the context of the conflict with Tito’s Yugoslavia, unleashed on Stalin’s initiative in 1948, the Soviet Union took steps to rally all the countries of the emerging Eastern bloc on the anti-Yugoslav platform. Particularly active in the anti-Yugoslav campaign was the leader of the Hungarian communists, Mátyás Rákosi, who feared that Moscow would not forgive him for his former closeness with the leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party. In order to prove his loyalty to Stalin, and at the same time get rid of the most powerful domestic political competitor, Rákosi organized a large show trial of László Rajk, prepared with the participation of advisers from the USSR, modeled on the great Moscow trials of the 1930s. The Rajk trial of September 1949 further escalated the campaign against the Tito regime, during which, in accordance with a new resolution of the Cominform, adopted in November 1949, Yugoslavia was declared a country which was no longer in the power of just nationalists and revisionists, but spies and killers. The reader is invited to read the protocol of interrogation of László Rajk with the participation of the future leader of Hungary, János Kádár, who himself would be subjected to severe repressions by the Rákosi regime two years later on similar charges. For the communist reformer János Kádár, involvement in the Rajk case became as indelible a stain on his political career as the suppression of the popular uprising in 1956.

Arming The Iraqi Army By Western Countries 1958-1963

The establishment of the republican regime in Iraq on the fourteenth of 1958 represented an important turning point in the policy of arming the Iraqi army, as the Iraqi government sought during this period to diversify the sources of weapons, with the aim of achieving multiple goals, most importantly the security and economic motives for this diversification, in addition to To the military and organizational reasons that pushed it towards this direction, the government also sought to obtain high-quality weapons at the lowest possible costs. The government tended to strengthen the capabilities and capabilities of the Iraqi army, as part of the strategy to implement the goals of republican rule. In this context, the government increased financial allocations to the Ministry of Defense with the aim of improving military equipment and modernizing the armed forces. This period also witnessed intense competition between the countries of the Western bloc and the countries of the eastern bloc regarding... Imposing their influence in Iraq by supplying weapons and equipment to the Iraqi army, as each country sought to strengthen its military and political presence in the region

Touring Feminist Realism in Actually Existing Socialism: The Exhibitions and Travels of Danish Artist Dea Trier Mørch across the Iron Curtain, 1962–1989

Dea Trier Mørch (1941–2001) was a popular – and recently rediscovered – artist often associated with feminism and the formative years of the Danish Women’s Rights movement. Throughout her career, she worked and exhibited frequently in the Eastern Bloc countries, but the details of these activities and the reception of her work in this context is still a little known aspect of her life and work. The article will analyse the case of Trier Mørch as a Danish artist exhibiting in the communist bloc countries. From attending art academies in the 1960s (mainly in Poland and the USSR) to taking part of exhibitions both individually and as part of artist collective Røde Mor such as Biennale der Ostseeländer in Rostock and Intergrafik in East Berlin, the activities of Trier Mørch show encounters and interactions with the other art world of state socialism at various levels, such as conflicts and paradoxes, including on the issue of feminism and women’s rights in the different systems. Following an individual through larger structures like international exchanges and art diplomacy will also shed fresh light on the developments in international cultural relations in the Nordic-Baltic region and provide context for the artist’s commitment and positioning through a formative period in contemporary history.