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Through a glass darkly: East German assistance to North Korea and alternative narratives of the cold war
This chapter reviews recent developments of research on the history of globalization in post-war East Central Europe, and more broadly in Eastern Europe, and deconstructs the arguments presented in the revisionist perspective on state socialist globalization. Several influential works have undertaken a thorough revision of conventional approaches to the globalization of European state socialist countries. It is contended that the region became much more globalized in the three or four decades following World War II than previously thought. This new understanding highlights distinctive structural and temporal patterns of globalization within the region. In particular, the globalization of this region was shaped by its relations with the Global South, as the expansion of East-South links largely offset the deficits in their relations with the Western world. Furthermore, the year 1989 assumes a new role in the globalization process; several authors explicitly refute the notion that the regime changes accelerated the region's globalization, arguing instead that these changes only altered the nature of the region's globalization.
While earlier historical interpretations emphasized the relative isolation of European state socialist countries after World War II, a significant body of recent research challenges this view, suggesting instead that these countries were much more global than previously assumed. This line of research claims that their extensive relations with the Global South largely compensated for their muted ties with the West. Revisionist studies also question the impact of regime changes on globalization in the region, emphasizing the continuities between the pre-1989 and the post-communist periods. In this context, the book explores how East Central European state socialist countries fit into the general trend of globalization after World War II, focusing on foreign trade, capital and information flows, and the movement of people. Conceptual problems are also addressed, such as the value of recently introduced terms like ‘alternative globalization’ and ‘socialist protoglobalization’ for understanding state socialist globalization. In doing so, the study strikes a balance between traditional and new mainstream interpretations. It acknowledges that East Central European societies experienced significant globalization during the state socialist era. However, based on empirical evidence, this study proposes other notions, including fragmentation, selectivity, and unevenness to conceptualize this process, rather than ‘alternative’ or ‘proto-’ globalization.
This chapter considers four major aspects of globalization in state socialist East Central Europe, which also serve as a basis for assessing the soundness of new and older mainstream interpretations: trade, capital movements, information flows, and the movement of people. The East Central European state socialist countries achieved a relatively low level of globalization between World War II and the period of regime changes, which is evident in all the aspects surveyed. At the same time, there is no empirical evidence to support the claim that globalization in the region decreased in the two decades leading up to the regime changes. On the contrary, during the latter period, globalization advanced slowly but steadily in the East Central European countries. The gradual increase in openness was facilitated by the growing complexity of their economies, growing consumer demands, and the ongoing globalization of the world at large, as well as by rapid technological change, such as the spread of new information and communication technologies. From the 1970s onwards, the region also experienced internal divergence: the international openness of Poland and Hungary increased more significantly than that of Czechoslovakia.
From the establishment of the World Health Organization in 1948, the question of technical assistance was hotly debated by Eastern European countries. Recuperating from the war and undergoing radical political change, they were both recipients and donors of technical assistance in a newly forming system of international health. These countries had specific ideas about the obligations of states and the role of technical aid that did not necessarily map on the dominant, US-led interpretation. While there is a growing literature on technical assistance between Eastern Europe and the so-called Third World, the role of technology and expertise at the intersection of liberal and socialist international health has been little explored. Through the case of hospital-building projects and expert networks from a Hungarian perspective, this paper asks how we can understand socialist engagement in international health, and how technical assistance among the Second and Third worlds fitted into broader systems.
For decades, German Democratic Republic (GDR) architecture was seen as parochial and dictated by the Soviets, yet increasing scholarly interest has generated a picture of debates and specific practices that were embedded in the global process of expansion and crisis of Modernism. Meanwhile, and influenced by the East-West conflict, competing concepts of modernization and national identity arose in the so-called Third World, initiating multifarious cultural transfer processes. This article analyses to what extent the architects from the GDR – a country whose building practice was increasingly shaped by the principles of industrial prefabrication – have played a part in regional contexts and construction methods. It also asks what their role was in international organizations such as Union Internationale des Architects and UNESCO, which promoted their practical engagement abroad. The subject raises issues of possible freedom of action in creative design and fusion processes, but also of bureaucratic constrictions and international relationships ending in unexpected conflicts. The examples outline the field of activities that stretches from pure blueprint delivery for a memorial competition to long-standing work on location when planning whole neighbourhoods. Furthermore, the article examines how the challenges of international planning impacted building culture within the GDR itself.
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