REPORT | Socialist (Dis-)Connections

Photo by Norbert Braun on Unsplash

A workshop funded by the CENTRAL Network 

 

In recent years, historians have turned to global socialism in order to explore the complex and dynamic nature of the global Cold War and trace an alternative genealogy of our global world. As the socialist world was all but immune to regime changes, political tribulations and postcolonial reconfigurations, this workshop explored new avenues for research on the role of the seemingly peripheral countries of Eastern and Southern Europe and their interconnections with decolonizing states and the globalizing world. Going beyond the usual focus on the confrontation between two geopolitical and ideological empires, the contributions to the workshop discussed the meanings of socialist internationalism, the role of cultural, educational and economic exchange, migration between countries as diverse as Czechoslovakia and Cuba, Poland and Vietnam, and China and Yugoslavia, and the repercussions of international developments within countries such as Hungary.

 

The robust discussions held during the workshop initiated a number of collaborations among workshop participants. Jannis Panagiotidis was invited by Constantin Katsakioris to give a talk on Panagiotidis’ current book project at a research seminar at Charles University in Prague. The talk is titled “Racism against East Europeans” and it will take place on December 7, 2022. Based on their panel from the workshop, Thuc Linh Nguyen Vu together with Igor Chabrowski will submit a panel proposal for the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference in 2024. The panel for AAS will broaden the scope of topics related to cultural exchanges between Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia during global Cold War covered at the Socialist (Dis)Connections. In addition, Artemy Kalinovsky who delivered the keynote talk on development will be guest at the Transformative Podcast (host: Thuc Linh Nguyen Vu). The conversation for the podcast will use the keynote as a starting point for a broader discussion on the role of development as a prism to understand new developments in global history.

 

Find out more about the workshop here

New calls for workshops will be published here