A Dynamic History of the Cold War

Cold War is far from being a completely known story and as we are advancing into our multi-polar, close to chaos world, available information - archives and independent researches in specific domains - are showing a world far from being fully bipolar. However, once one is entering into the many details - previously less discussed in the media and academic circles, it is easy to notice that the world during the Cold War was far from being easy, and based on a synchronicity between one world - the communist, Soviet managed block of countries - and the other - the liberal, democratic one.

In reality, there were an enormous number of actors interacting within or outside the given narrative, creating alliances, cooperating, fighting for supremacy, including within the two block themselves. At least for the communist block, the inimities between the Soviets and Yugoslavia, as well as the changing waves of influence - switching between East and West at least several times in some cases -in Latin America, are only few examples of such alternatives.

Organiser le Monde - Organising the world, in my own translation - by Sandrine Kott suggests an interesting analysis into the Cold War through the various interactions that took place between representatives of the two blocks and the ideological systems represented, within the framework of international organisations. 

Within organisations such as the UN or UNESCO, the countries from both sides of the Iron Curtain were able to communicate with each other, get to know and eventually act together on various issues of bilateral common interest. Economic organisations, or the dialogue open up by the Helsinki Charter were as many opportunities for dialogue and exchange. 

The research is systematic, adding the details following specific topics and a historical timeline. It is well documented both historically and by using various sources of information. However, I had the feeling that there were many important aspects left behind, that would have deserve more details, for instance the amount of ´soft power´ the US spent in the last two decades of the Cold War by the way of academic exchanges. 

The diversity of aspects and topics outlined in the book offer valuable inspiration and suggestions for further studies in the field of both international relations and Cold War history. It also helps to understand our current world and to trace the global, regional and international alliances.

Rating: 4 stars

´Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe´

I don´t remember when I´ve read the last time about spy stories in Eastern Europe. It used to be a topic I dealt with as a historian, especially when reconstructing intellectual profiles and histories from this part of the world. Personally, I´ve considered it a real hole of rats that disgusted me deeply. Once you start searching through the files carefully set up by the so-called ´intelligence´ services of the time, there is no end of human ignominy. It helps when you try to avoid to have role-models but still, why they should be so low and accept to betray their neighbours, friends, relatives in exchange for money or priviledges that will never amount to the harm they did. I remember I met once a woman who once was recruited when she was in school, a teenager. She accepted. When the public discussion about collaboration and relationship with communist secret police was hot, that woman met me for a coffee and confessed that once she said candidly ´yes´. I tried to be polite with her, finish my coffee and avoid her for the rest of my stay. Simply, don´t want to have anything to do with such people and it is my personal choice for reasons of mental hygiene.

Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe, edited by Valentina Glajan, Alison Lewis and Corina L. Petrescu. is a volume of stories collected from the Stasi archives, Romania´s Securitate and the Ukrainian KGB, among others. In addition, there are also chapter on the representation of the Cold War in movies on both sides of the Iron Curtain. 

If you are not familiar with the Cold War context and its intricacies do not expect to understand it by reading this book - that I had in audiobook format - but otherwise the stories outlined are really interesting for the specific topics addressed. For instance the story of a Romanian Jew that worked as a secret police officer before being dismissed after ten years of activity on an anti-Semitic ground - which happened very often at the time. Another chapter deals with the many faces of the GDR spymaster Markus Wolf. Literature and the production of books in general were a very important matter of interest for the secret services at the time. They use writers as informers and censors in a clear effort of divide the intellectuals and keep them under the state control. The story of the Romanian-born Hungarian Jew Ana Novac - her real name was Zimra Harsanyi - , a Shoah survivor, a plawriter and memorialist that died in Paris, is an example in this respect. People that were in contact with her were writing surveillance notes with a strong personal note of disdain for her burgeois habits and her sexual activities. Another topic that I´ve found personally very interesting regards the Turkish men working as seasonal labour force in the West that were recruited by the East during their trips to the communist part of Berlin looking for fun and sexual adventures. The story of the Orthodox priest who denounced his collaboration with the West that a couple of years after the end of the Soviet Union was among the ultranationalist Russian-speaking publication Zavtra is no surprise. 

Personally, I was interested in reading more stories from the secret files but that was maybe rather an intellectual voyeurism. I was entering the mood of terrible stories and was ready to remember that this is how the human nature works, regardless the intellectual preoccupations and the particular education. The final part of the book deals with the movies representations of the Cold War, through the analysis of a couple of the productions. The relevance of the topic of surveillance, in a post-Cold War context remains, but as in many respects regarding the multi-polar world, there is a lot of political ambiguity and circumstantial meaning. 

Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe were not intended to be more than fragments of a complex mosaique that still has its own secrets. It has a critical box of tools as well as conceptual delimitations and definitions which are very helpful for the reader that have not experienced directly the political pressures of the time. Personally, I would be curious about the feedback about such stories from someone who never faced the restriction of democratic freedoms. 

Maybe it is about time to delve back into some Cold War stories or write more myself. One day...

Rating: 4 stars