Blurring Boundaries in the Cold War World

Abstract

The cultural turn in Cold War scholarship which emerged in the 1990s explored the roles of governments and the hegemony of their ideas in waging a cultural Cold War, both domestically and internationally against an opposing ideology. More recent interpretations including those reviewed here have examined the ambiguous nature of each Cold War sphere and the occasionally porous nature of the division between the blocs. Scholars have explored the roles of governments from East and West in shaping public conversations about the Cold War by influencing culture and facilitating interactions between sections of their own population and the other side. The five books reviewed here, alongside several other recent publications, reveal nuances within the blocs and suggest that the period was far less Manichean than previously understood, with frequent encounters leading to attempts to understand the other side. Neither ‘East’ nor ‘West’ was a homogenous bloc. Networks, both state-led and in collaboration with the private sector, traversed borders and sometimes mediated the exchange of people and ideas across the iron curtain. Historians have increasingly started to explore these networks and unlock the complexities of Cold War alliances and rivalries within and between blocs.