The almost simultaneous processes of de-Stalinisation, decolonisation and postwar reglobalisation provided a context in which many eastern European states 'opened up' to a wider socialist world outside Europe. This paper will explore how eastern European socialist states sought to make the decolonising world and its anti-imperial struggles meaningful to domestic populations in education, youth culture, and media, and how these processes opened up new nonconformist languages and practices.
James Mark is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. Most of his research addresses the social and cultural history of state socialism in central-eastern Europe, the politics of memory in the area during both socialism and post-socialism, or connects the region to broader global histories and processes. He is the author of The Unfinished Revolution: Making Sense of the Communist Past in Central-Eastern Europe, and co-author of Europe's 1968: Voices of Revolt and Che in Budapest: Global Revolution in the Eastern Bloc (in preparation). He is currently running the project '1989 after 1989: Rethinking the Fall of State Socialism in Global Perspective' (http://1989after1989.exeter.ac.uk/)