Cold War Crossings: International Travel and Exchange across the Soviet Bloc, 1940s-1960s

Introduction

INTRODUCTION Vladislav Zubok The power-centered and ideology-driven debates that affected the historiography of the Cold War have given way to wider interdisciplinary projects. Historians began to rethink the boundaries of international history between  and  beyond the well-known narratives of the US-Soviet confrontation, divided Europe, and the Western and Soviet blocs. Attention shifted to studies of lesser-known developments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the nonaligned movement, and other alternatives to bipolarity. With this, the central structures of the Cold War—the divide between the blocs and the blocs themselves—went out of scholarly fashion. This volume returns to such unfashionable topics as the Soviet bloc, the Iron Curtain, and East-West relations. All the authors raise novel questions linking traditional political questions about the Cold War with transnational experiences. What was the effect of the cross-border transfers of people, technologies, and culture on the fate of the Soviet Union and the whole Soviet bloc? What were the consequences of attempts to homogenize the bloc and to export its “soft power”? How did the gap between the realities and expectations about “real socialism” affect both pilgrims from outside and the people inside? Particularly appealing is a renewed focus on individuals, as opposed to the emphasis on the state and state structures with the almost inevitable simplifications and clichés that follow from such emphasis. When I read the contributions to this volume, my scholarly curiosity was blended with an acute sense of remembrance. It is difficult to explain to younger people the mighty psychological and cultural effects that the crossings of the Iron Curtain produced. Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński famously described the effect of “crossing the frontier” for the first time in his autobiographical travelogue. Yet crossing the border of 2 zubok Poland as a journalist of Sztandar Młodych in  was easier than crossing the Iron Curtain from the Soviet Union in , when I did it for the first time. As a young Soviet-trained intellectual, specializing in the political history of the United States, I belonged to the generation that my colleague Sergei I. Zhuk called “the Beatles generation.” We watched imported movies in Soviet movie theaters, read the illustrated magazine Amerika, and crossed the frontier thousands of times in our dreams. Yet it was quite improbable in real life. The Soviet regime erected what Michael David-Fox calls the “semipermeable membrane”—i.e., regulated exchanges and contacts with the West. The membrane was double: one valve allowed exit to East European members of the Soviet bloc; and only the next valve regulated access to the “capitalist world.” Getting an external passport and “valiuta” (hard currency) to travel abroad from the Soviet Union until – required a cascade of permissions and authorizations: first the triangle of the Komsomol or the party local secretary, the head of the local trade union, and the head of the working unit; then the “commission of Old Bolsheviks” that tested your loyalty and political correctness, then the clearance of the higher-ups, including the KGB and the special sector at the party central apparatus. A denial or refusal could occur in any part of this cumbersome and mostly secretive pyramid. Scientists, artists, dancers, entire symphonic orchestras, and of course many Soviet Jews had to bid farewell to their dreams of crossing frontiers because they could not obtain clearance, often without any apparent reason, just because somebody “up there” did not like something about them and did not trust their loyalty—as in the case of ballet dancer Maya Plisetskaia, who wrote an angry testimony of her experiences. This volume reminds us that, these fierce obstacles notwithstanding, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Soviet citizens crossed the Iron Curtain. Their ability to work, travel, and teach in “socialist” and “nonsocialist ” countries created a transnational movement that the authors put in the center of their studies. What was the impact of the movement through “the membrane”— for the people who went through it and those who did not? Broader historical frameworks can impart new meanings to old personal experiences. First, they help to understand how much the identity, one can even say patriotism , of the “Soviet” and the “East European” individual depended on external factors, such as encounters with foreign tourists, Western movies, songs, and, of course, the ability to travel outside one’s country. Second, introduction 3 new...