Courses

This course follows a paradigm developed by the historians Artemy Kalinovsky, James Mark, and Steffi Marung, termed alternative globalization, or socialist globalization, which focuses on the interconnections and global policy of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe during the Cold War. This course will study the interactions between China and Eastern Europe during the Cold War, and their independent interactions with the rest of the world, with attention paid to intellectual exchanges, economic aid, geopolitical competition, and diverging developmental pathways. In broad terms: 1) It will begin with the intertwined histories of the origins and development of the CCP and the establishment of communist states in Eastern Europe, 2) then study the process of economic aid to China from the Soviet Union, 3) the Sino-Soviet Split and China’s role in the Non-Aligned Movement, 4) the competition between Eastern Europe states and China for global influence after the Sino-Soviet Split, 5) the actions of Eastern European states and China in Africa, 6) the process of economic reform in China under Deng Xiaoping, 7) and the divergence in reform between China and Eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s. Throughout this course we will be wrestling with a series of questions – What was global socialism? Why was China able to successfully reform and the Eastern Bloc not? What role did global socialism play in creating the world we live in today? How should we historicize global socialism, Eastern Europe, and China’s fall and rise?