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The idea of planning economy and engineering social life has often been linked with Communist regimes¿ will of control. However, the persuasion that social and economic processes could and should be regulated was by no means limited to them. Intense debates on these issues developed already during the First World War in Europe and became globalized during the World Economic crisis. During the Cold War, such discussions fuelled competition between two models of economic and social organisation but they also revealed the convergences and complementarities between them. This ambiguity, so often overlooked in histories of the Cold War, represents the central issue of the book organized around three axes. First, it highlights how know-how on planning circulated globally and were exchanged by looking at international platforms and organizations. The volume then closely examines specificities of planning ideas and projects in the Communist and Capitalist World. Finally, it explores East-West channels generated by exchanges around issues of planning which functioned irrespective of the Iron Curtain and were exported in developing countries. The volume thus contributes to two fields undergoing a process of profound reassessment: the history of modernisation and of the Cold War.

This book offers an analysis of general trends and particularities in the history of the global spread of the Workers¿ Faculty idea and its implementation in local contexts. It also discusses the thesis of a socialist globalization in the field of education.

How did the societies of late Socialist Eastern and East-Central Europe construct their private and public spheres? This volume reaches beyond the ¿comfort zone¿ of privacy studies, which originated in western liberal democracies, by exploring contexts in which ideas about privacy and publicity have been approached differently, thereby offering unique insights into our global understandings of these concepts.

Despite increasing scholarship on the cultural Cold War, focus has been persistently been fixed on superpowers and their actions, missing the important role played by individuals and organizations all over Europe during the Cold War years.This volume focuses on cultural diplomacy and artistic interaction between Eastern and Western Europe after 1945. It aims at providing an essentially European point of view on the cultural Cold War, providing fresh insight into little known connections and cooperation in different artistic fields. Chapters of the volume address photography and architecture, popular as well as classical music, theatre and film, and fine arts. By examining different actors ranging from individuals to organizations such as universities, the volume brings new perspective on the mechanisms and workings of the cultural Cold War. Finally, the volume estimates the pertinence of the Cold War and its influence in post-1991 world.The volume offers an overview on the role culture played in international politics, as well as its role in the Cold War more generally, through interesting examples and case studies.

Performing Peace and Friendship. The World Youth Festival and Soviet Cultural Diplomacy represents a pioneering work in Soviet and Cold War history. It is the first English-language, archival based monograph on Soviet cultural diplomacy and the Moscow 1957 World Youth Festival, one of the most frequently referred moments of Khrushchev's Thaw. Through a case-study of the World Youth Festival, the book provides new insights into the Soviet role in the cultural Cold War and offers an explanation why the USSR failed in the cultural battle against the USA and the capitalist system. Furthermore, with a detailed analysis of grass-roots interaction, it re-evaluates the agency of micro-level actors and argues that individuals had more chances for transnational contacts than previous scholarship has shown. With a transnational approach to Soviet cultural diplomacy and cultural exchange the book continues the scholarly work of Michael David-Fox, Anne E. Gorsuch, Susan Reid, Vladislav Zubok, and Rósa Magnúsdóttir.

Eleanor M. Wheeler, a correspondent for the Religious News Service, wrote letters from Prague to her friends in the USA from 1947 to 1957. Her husband, George Shaw Wheeler, was a colonel in the US Army and the chief of the de-Nazification section of the Manpower Division of the Office of the Military Government (OMGUS). While in Germany in 1946, Wheeler's contract was not renewed, mainly due to suspicions that he was disloyal to the US government and had connections to the communist movement. Afterwards the entire family moved to Prague, where in 1951 they applied for political asylum. The correspondence depicts ten years of life in Czechoslovakia-from the rise of communism through high Stalinism to the de-Stalinization of the country-from the perspective of pro-Communist-minded Americans. Thematically, the correspondence covers a wide range of political, cultural, and social topics, including the Cold War, the Korean War, the role of Christians in mediating dialogue between East and West, McCarthyism, and topics focused on the internal politics of Czechoslovakia.

Until the end of the Cold War in 1990, building projects and architectural icons played an important role in the self-portrayal of the competing systems. However, as the current research shows, we also find a large variety of forms of cooperation between the East, the South, and the West, not to forget the manifold cross-border entanglements within the South or the East. This book explores the intersection of two strands of research. On the one hand, interaction in the field of architecture and construction between actors from socialist countries and from countries of the Global South have increasingly won interest amongst historians of architecture and planning. On the other hand, in the context of the strongly emerging Cold War Studies, scholars have explored cooperation and circulation across the Iron Curtain with a focus on economic and research planning. This book connects perspectives of planning, construction and architectural design with those on economic interests and conflicts in projects and networks. Furthermore, it opens the view to the hubs of communication and exchange, and on patterns of longterm transformation and appropriation of architecture.