Beyond the Divide

Cold War history has emphasized the division of Europe into two warring camps with separate ideologies and little in common. This volume presents an alternative perspective by suggesting that there were transnational networks bridging the gap and connecting like-minded people on both sides of the divide. Long before the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were institutions, organizations, and individuals who brought people from the East and the West together, joined by shared professions, ideas, and sometimes even through marriage. The volume aims at proving that the post-WWII histories of Western and Eastern Europe were entangled by looking at cases involving France, Denmark, Poland, Romania, Switzerland, and others.

Simo Mikkonen is a Finnish Academy Research fellow in the Department of History and Ethnology at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He is the author of State Composers and the Red Courtiers: Music, Ideology, and Politics in the Soviet 1930s (2009).

Pia Koivunen is lecturer in European and World History at the University of Turku. She is currently completing a monograph on the World Youth Festival and Soviet Cultural Diplomacy; and another book on individuals’ experiences on traveling to Eastern Europe during the Cold War years.