Planning in Cold War Europe: Competition, Cooperation, Circulations (1950s–1970s)
Wednesday, 5 June 2019, 4–6 pm, Vlašská 9, Praha 1 – CANCELLED !
This seminar is co-hosted by the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Institute of International Studies of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University.
In her talk, Professor Sandrine Kott (University of Geneva) will present the collective volume entitled Planning in Cold War Europe: Competition, Cooperation, Circulations (1950s–1970s). The book revises our understanding of the Cold War. It shows that beyond differences and rivalries the Cold War was a time of intense circulation of expertise and knowledge in the European space across the Iron Curtain. Even if Eastern and Western European economic elites had divergent understandings of planning, they shared a belief in the possibility of economic and social engineering. Up to the 1970s, the exchange of ideas and discussions around planning were rooted in a common modernist vision of progress. Professor Kott’s presentation will be followed by exposés of two participants in this collective project who will shortly introduce their case studies: Vítězslav Sommer (ÚSD AV ČR, Prague) on management studies in socialist Czechoslovakia and Ondřej Matějka (FSV UK, Prague) on debates on social engineering and alienation in Christian-Marxist dialogues.