Histories of Globalization in State Socialist Eastern Europe: Unevenness, Friction, and Incoherence

The 2010s and the 2020s have seen a revival of research on globalization in state socialist Eastern Europe, making it one of the most extensive areas of study in the region’s contemporary history. The new wave of research has produced a wealth of novel approaches and findings, often directly challenging the long-standing narratives that had argued for a Western-led globalization process and emphasized the isolation of state socialist countries. Increasingly more historians turned their attention to entanglements with the Global South, through which Eastern European countries achieved a much deeper globalization than previously assumed. This special section aims to contribute to this ongoing discussion by showing that the interactions between Eastern Europe and the Global South did not conform to the traditional assumptions that these relations were mainly driven by ideology or that they should be interpreted primarily as centrally managed projects under Soviet hegemony. Reflecting on the new wave of research, the contributors suggest that incoherence, unevenness, and friction should be considered as defining features of East-South relations. We address various aspects of Eastern Europe’s global interconnectedness, based on case studies focusing on Czechoslovakia, Hungary (including a comparison with Austria), Poland, and the Women’s International Democratic Federation.