Cultural History of the Cold War

2024/2025

Academic Year

ENG

Instruction in English

6

ECTS credits

Delivered at:

Department of History

Course type:

Elective course

When:

2 year, 1, 2 module

Instructors

Platonova, Evgeniia

Chunikhin, Kirill

Course Syllabus

Abstract

This course examines the Cold War, commonly treated as a period of rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States. Considering a global context East-West context, we will explore the ideological conflict of communism/socialism and capitalism from late 1940s to the early 1990s. While focusing on the origins, major episodes and results of the Cold War, we will analyze recently published and declassified historical documents. This will allow discussing both traditional and novel interpretations of the Cold War from diverse and competing perspectives. Approaching the Cold War globally, we will reveal its multiple aspects from conflicts to various forms of cooperation. This will help us to acknowledge both the barriers and the bridges which the Cold War produced. Therefore, the course will overcome the dominant traditional interpretation of the Cold War as of an exclusively political conflict of two superpowers. Uncovering cultural dimensions of the Cold War, we will examine complex interactions of states, institutions, and independent actors. In doing so, we will discuss such themes as the Iron Curtain and its symbolic meanings; modernity and the Cold War; economic competition and the great divergence of the 20th century; decolonization and technological aid to the Third World; confrontation and cooperation in science, technology and culture; technology transfers and encounters of “small” actors; imagining the other; global environmentalism; globalization and confrontation; and legacy of Cold War thinking in post-Cold War world. Upon completion of the course, students will have a firm knowledge of Cold War dimensions, chronology, and historiography.

Learning Objectives

• Overcoming dominant understanding of the Cold War as a political rivalry, we will discuss the significance of economic and cultural developments as can be seen in the history of exchange visits, mutual projects, international fairs and exhibitions, scientific cooperation, etc. Such themes as technological and cultural modernity; economic competition; decolonization and technological aid to the Third World; technology transfers and encounters of small actors; and imagining the other are covered within the course as well. Such research optics allows examining trajectories of communism and capitalism in different parts of the globe while revealing international tensions and cooperation. Upon completion of the course, the students will have a firm knowledge of the period and a full-fledged understanding of manifold of historical approaches.

Expected Learning Outcomes

• Able to perform professional activities, including research and development activities in the international environment
• Is able to analyze historical sources, scientific texts and reports, to review scientific literature in Russian and foreign languages
• Is able to perform interdisciplinary interaction and cooperation with representatives of other fields of knowledge while solving research and applied tasks
• Is able to improve and develop his intellectual and cultural level, to build a trajectory of professional development and career
• Able to perform research with modern research methods and techniques, using knowledge of the humanities and social sciences and close scientific fields of knowledge

Course Contents

• Cold War Basics. Introduction
• Poetics of Atom
• Construction and Studies of Cold War Global Commons (Oceans, Antarctic, Space)
• Cold War Modernities
• Hot Art and Culture during the Cold War
• Domestic Fronts of Cultural Cold War
• Technology of the Cold War
• Many spaces/places of the Cold War: From Binary to Global
• Environmental Cold War
• Cold War Commemoration
• Cold War Ideologies
• The End: Reasons and Interpretations

Assessment Elements

• Final essay
• Attendance and participation

Interim Assessment

• 2024/2025 2nd module
  0.5 * Attendance and participation + 0.5 * Final essay

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• Brown, A. (2007). Perestroika and the End of the Cold War. Cold War History, 7(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.1080/14682740701197631
• Gabrielle Hecht. (2011). Entangled Geographies : Empire and Technopolitics in the Global Cold War. The MIT Press.
• Glenthøj, R. (2016). Rosanna Farbøl. “Commemoration of a Cold War: The Politics of History and Heritage at Cold War Memory sites in Denmark.” Cold War History 15:4 (2015): 471-490. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14682745.2015.1028532. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.696C0198
• Konrad H. Jarausch, Christian Ostermann, & Andreas Etges. (2017). The Cold War : Historiography, Memory, Representation. De Gruyter Oldenbourg.
• Sara Lorenzini. (2019). Global Development : A Cold War History. Princeton University Press.
• The Cambridge history of the Cold War / ed. by Melvyn P. Leffler . (2010). Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edswao&AN=edswao.468196099

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• Smetana, V., & Kramer, M. (2014). Imposing, Maintaining, and Tearing Open the Iron Curtain : The Cold War and East-Central Europe, 1945–1989. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=670088

Authors

• LYUBAVINA SVETLANA VYACHESLAVOVNA
• CHUNIKHIN KIRILL ALEXANDROVICH