Abstract

The Cold War was not only about the imperial ambitions of the super powers, their military strategies, and antagonistic ideologies. It was also about conflicting worldviews and their correlates in the daily life of the societies involved. The term “Cold War Culture” is often used in a broad sense to describe media influences, social practices, and symbolic representations as they shape, and are shaped by, international relations. Yet, it remains in question whether — or to what extent — the Cold War Culture model can be applied to European societies, both in the East and the West. While every European country had to adapt to the constraints imposed by the Cold War, individual development was affected by specific conditions as detailed in these chapters. This volume offers an important contribution to the international debate on this issue of the Cold War impact on everyday life by providing a better understanding of its history and legacy in Eastern and Western Europe.

“Overall, then, this is an important contribution to European Cold War history which will hopefully find its way onto reading lists for courses on post-1945 European history.” · War in History

“Cold War Cultures is an ambitious collection of essays by an interdisciplinary group of American and European scholars – including historians, sociologists, and cultural theorists… [that] makes a compelling case for why individual countries in Europe should be included in the historiography of the conflict.” · Canadian-American Slavic Studies

“…this is a book for researchers, but I believe those who are interested in European culture from the 1950s to 1980s would appreciate these scholarly pieces as vivid explanations of its background. The editors have done a great job in combining such varied topics into a single volume.” · European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire

“The collection is… invaluable in informing English-language readers how Czechs, Romanians, Russians, Swedes, Austrians, Italians, Slovenes, and (more than any other nationality) Germans experienced the travail of a divided continent.” · Journal of Cold War Studies

“This is a very interesting edited collection of essays that makes a valuable and indeed a pathbreaking contribution to the study of an important emerging area… [It] offers a very original take on the [existing] literature in that it seeks to broaden the debate to ask questions about European Cold War Cultures, as opposed to the North American ones that have dominated the literature hitherto.” · Mark Pittaway, Open University, UK

Marcus M. Payk is currently a Fellow in the Department of History, Humboldt University in Berlin and specializes in twentieth-century German and transatlantic history. He received his doctorate in Modern History from the University of Bochum in 2005 and was awarded a Dilthey-Fellowship for excellent young researchers in the humanities in 2011.

Annette Vowinckel received her doctorate from the University of Essen and her Habilitation from Humboldt University in Berlin. She is a specialist in cultural history of the Renaissance and the twentieth century. A researcher at the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam, she has recently published a book on the cultural history of skyjacking.

Thomas Lindenberger received his doctorate from the Technical University Berlin and his Habilitation from Potsdam University. He was a research director at the Potsdam Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung and is currently the director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for European History and Public Spheres in Vienna. He has held guest professorships at EHESS Paris, CEU Budapest and Vienna University.