Seminar: We All Fall Down. The Collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Dawn of the Post–Cold War International Order
Between 1989 and 1991, the states of Eastern Europe recognized that the world was changing and that their relationship with the Soviet Union, codified in the Warsaw Pact alliance, was an impediment to success in the post–Cold War international order. Eastern bloc institutions were on their way out, while Western institutions were much more likely to survive into the future. As such, policy-makers worked to both break apart Eastern institutions and integrate with Western ones, seeking security (and a hedge against a hard-line takeover in the Soviet Union) but above all economic benefits. This process began before the transition to democracy had been completed, and in fact was initiated by some of the old communist-era elite, not new, pro-Western reformers. Using Czech, Hungarian, German, Polish, and Romanian archives, the main speaker of the seminar advances new information on and a new interpretation of a critical historical event, the end of the Cold War and the expansion of Western institutions into the formerly Soviet sphere of influence, as well as the impact of that expansion on Russian foreign policy today.
Main speaker: Simon Miles (Duke University)
Discussants: Daniela Kolenovská (FSV UK) a Matěj Bílý (ÚSD AV ČR)
The seminar will be held in English.
The seminar will be recorded and subsequently available at usd.cas.cz.