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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2021/2022

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of History, Classics and Archaeology : History

Undergraduate Course: The Geographies of Solidarity: Eastern Europe, Global South and Socialist Internationalism during the Cold War (HIST10448)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of History, Classics and Archaeology CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
SCQF Credits40 ECTS Credits20
SummaryThis course will offer an approach to "socialist globalisation" and the global history of socialism internationalism. It examines the geographies of solidarity as ways of transferring knowledge, products, commodities etc. within the socialistic world as well as the interactions between socialistic countries and/or on interactions alongside developing policy within East-Global South connections. The course is reading-intensive and includes both primary source material, such as newspapers reports, trade agreements, visual images etc., and secondary sources by contemporary historians.
Course description With the appeal "Let's win back human honour", a newspaper article about the technological cooperation between Socialist Poland and Socialistic Ghana was introduced to Polish readership in the early 1960s. It praised the scientific-technological exchange between this two countries. Above all, it emphasised the intellectual entanglement of the global socialistic solidarities and the socialistic investment in the making of modern and equal world, free of capitalistic exploitation and asymmetrical relationships in general.

Such and similar reports about scientific and cultural exchange, educational programs, political support, agricultural and infrastructural knowledge transfer or state-sponsored international initiatives to connect the non-Western world and intensified the, preferably socialistic, relationships within it, were an integral part of the media landscape in the 1960s-1980s. This was the case not only in Poland, but in all countries of the so-called "Eastern Bloc" as well as in many other countries from the so-called Second and Third World, from Soviet Union, GDR, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia to Tanzania, Sambia and Vietnam.

However, both the socialistic camp in general and the monolith "Eastern Bloc" with its attempts to export its socialistic vision and the socialistic solidarities in particular had thereby many faces and often struggled to find a common ground. This heterogeneity of the socialistic entanglements, interests and global cooperation will be focused on this course. We are going to look at the different patterns of cooperation, and the mechanisms and tools of international cultural, scientific and economic integration of the socialist global world. The aim is to explore the benefits and challenges as well as strengths and weaknesses of socialist vision of solidarity and socialistic development aid.

While the focus of this course is on the socialistic globalization, the entanglements between the Eastern Europe and the Global South as such, some related cases of the global NordSouth cooperation will be discussed as well.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements A pass in 40 credits of third level historical courses or equivalent.

Before enrolling students on this course, Personal Tutors are asked to contact the History Honours Admission Administrator to ensure that a place is available (Tel: 504030)
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. demonstrate an in-depth knowledge of key cultural, intellectual, scientific and political dynamics of East-South encounters;
  2. demonstrate an understanding of socialist solidarities, global connections in the 1950-1980s as well as theoretical and methodological concepts of area studies;
  3. read, analyze and reflect critically upon relevant scholarship as well as to develop an independent and well-argued conclusion in their coursework;
  4. use, to analyze and evaluate primary sources;
  5. demonstrate the ability to make informed contributions to class discussions and develop scholarly arguments in oral form.
Reading List
Babiracki, P.; Jersild, A. (eds.): Socialism Internationalism: Exploring the Second World, 2016.

Engerman, D.C.: The Second World's Third World. In: Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 12 (2011) 1, 183-211.

Imlay, T.C.: Exploring What Might Have Been: Parallel History, International History, and PostWar Socialist Internationalism. In: International History Review 31, 3 (2009), 521-57.

Iacob, B.C.: Is It Transnational? A New Perspective in the Study of Communism 1. In: East Central Europe, 40 (2013) 1-2, 114-39.

Jersild, A.: The Sino-Soviet Alliance: An International History, New York 2014.

Mark, J.; Bracke, M.A.: Between Decolonization and the Cold War: Transnational Activism and its Limits in Europe, 1950s-90s. In: Journal of Contemporary History, 50 (2015) 3, 403-417.

Matusevich, M.: No Easy Row for a Russian Hoe: Ideology and Pragmatism in Nigerian-Soviet Relations, 1960-1991, Trenton 2003.

Pons, S.: The Global Revolution: A History of International Communism, Oxford 2014.

Rupprecht, T.: Soviet Internationalism after Stalin: Interaction and Exchange Between the USSR and Latin America during the Cold War, Cambridge 2015.

Scarboro, C.: The Brother-City Project and Socialist Humanism: Haskovo, Tashkent and Sblizhenie. In: The Slavonic and East European Review, 85 (2007) 3, 522-542.

Snyder, S.B.: Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network, New York 2011.

Westad, O.A.: The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, Cambridge - New York 2005.
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
KeywordsNot entered
Contacts
Course organiserDr Justyna Turkowska
Tel:
Email: jturkows@exseed.ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMiss Claire Brown
Tel: (0131 6)50 3582
Email: cbrown20@exseed.ed.ac.uk
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