Source:
http://members.tripod.co.uk/GHS/swanseacfp.html
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GERMAN HISTORY SOCIETY REGIONAL CONFERENCE
UNIVERSITY OF WALES SWANSEA
17-19 APRIL 2001 (please note altered dates)
Call for Papers: A Social History of Central European Politics, 1945-
1953
Before 1989, the peoples of Central Europe were arguably written
out of their own recent history. The region was seen as a chess-
board, with individual countries being regarded as little more than
pawns in the Cold War confrontation between the Soviet Union and
the United States. There is now a need to write the people back into
the history of Central Europe after 1945.
This distortion of the historiography of post-war Central Europe was
the result of a number of factors. Firstly, the lack of access to
archival sources in the Soviet Bloc made it extremely difficult to
build up a picture of what was happening on the ground in those
areas which fell under Soviet occupation. Secondly, the
preoccupation with the political imperatives of the Cold War led to a
concentration on high politics and an under-estimation of the degree
to which policies emanating from Moscow and Washington were
modulated by grass roots realities. Finally, the division of Europe
into two mutually hostile blocs led to the temporary obscurement of
Central Europe as a political concept.
Developments since 1989 have made possible a thorough
reassessment of contemporary Central European history. The
scholar now has access to huge amounts of hitherto unavailable
archival material, and is no longer constrained by the ideological
straight-jacket of the Cold War. With the demise of the Iron Curtain,
Mitteleuropa has re-emerged as a salient feature of European
politics.
As a result, it is now possible to construct a more sophisticated
analysis of the interaction between American and Soviet policies in
Central Europe, and the political concerns and behaviour of ordinary
people. The countries of Central Europe were more than mere
pawns, and their peoples should not be seen as passive objects of
policies being imposed by the White House and the Kremlin.
The purpose of this conference is to look at popular politics and high
politics and their interaction in a comparative perspective. "Central
Europe" will be considered to comprise Austria, Czechoslovakia,
East Germany and Hungary. The sessions will be organised
according to some of the following themes, depending on the
response of participants:
- workers
- women
- minorities
- peasants
- intellectuals
- veterans
- youth
- middle classes
- refugees
- religion
If you would like to attend the conference or contribute a paper on
one of the above themes, focusing on one or more of the above
mentioned countries, please contact Dr Jill Lewis or Dr Gareth
Pritchard at the History Department, University of Wales Swansea,
SA2 8PP. Papers should be no longer than 30 minutes. Proposals
are welcome as soon as possible, but no later than 15 January
2001.
email: [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]
Some funding is available for speakers and for transport for
postgraduate students who wish to attend. Accommodation is
available on the University of Wales Swansea campus.
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