KL: James Mark: Socialism Goes Global: Eastern Europe and an Anti-Imperialist World 1954-1989

This lecture will examine the ways in which eastern Europeans grappled with the challenge of a post-colonial world, addressing how politicians, intellectuals and travellers from across the smaller countries of eastern Europe – from Poland to Hungary to Yugoslavia – encountered a decolonizing world from the 1950s onwards. It will explore some of those (mainly leftist) intellectuals who imagined a new cultural and geopolitical orientation for their region. It will address those who positioned eastern Europe as an organic part of a global anti-imperialist space – as they forged solidarities with those countries which appeared to be 'going their way' ideologically. It will analyse how some challenged the assumptions of European whiteness that had been long absorbed by eastern Europeans – but now, they believed, needed to be questioned. Finally, through exploring the growing de-legitimisation of socialist internationalism, the revival of discourses on Europeanness, and the re-affirmation of older notions of whiteness in the 1970s and 1980s, this paper will lay out the broader historical context for the difficulties of bringing the study of post-Communism and postcolonialism together after 1989. This lecture is taken from research conducted as part of the Arts and Humanities Council (UK)-funded project 'Socialism Goes Global': http://socialismgoesglobal.exeter.ac.uk/

// Prof. Dr. James Mark (University of Exeter, UK)