György Péteri

Suggested themes for MA theses

The history of East-West Relations since World War II

· The history of Western area studies on Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union:

The study of the intellectual and political history of Eastern European Studies (ESS) in the Western World is of relevance not only for the history of scholarship and academic life, but also for the political history of the Cold War era and, in some cases, even that of the interwar years. Many of the practitioners of area study in Britain, the US, or in Scandinavia had significant role(s) to play in informing and shaping their countries’ foreign policies towards the “communist camp”. There are, thus, several directions one might develop her/his investigation – to name but two, a thesis project may focus upon (a) the relationship between academic scholarship / higher education and politics, analyzing patterns of agenda-setting for research, the repertoire of various roles and “ars poeticas” available for, adopted and asserted by different scholars (stretching from “ivory tower” attitudes to the role of advisor, public intellectual, etc.). (b) In terms of history of academic life, the emergence of “area studies” (Britain was probably the pioneer in this respect) is a significant phenomenon in itself, not much discussed in the literature. How come area studies could institutionalize themselves in academic regimes where the disciplinary organization of scholarly endeavor ruled supreme? What were the factors, for example, constraining and enabling the British pioneers of East European studies (R. W. Seton-Watson and others), in the early 1910s, to establish the School of Slavonic Studies (later and today: School of Slavonic and East European Studies)? We would study different phases of the emergence and development of British, North American (US and Canadian) and Scandinavian (especially Swedish) East European studies on the basis of archival as well as published documents.

· Cultural exchanges between East and West – Political motives and consequences:

From the second half of the 1950s, an increasing stream of cultural and academic visitors came across the cold-war East-West divide within the frameworks of bilateral exchange agreements between “capitalist” and “socialist” countries. Also, there were some major initiatives of leading Western (especially US) philanthropic organizations that brought about similar exchanges on a relatively large scale. What were the intentions and expectations on the two sides with regard to these exchanges and what were their intended and unintended consequences? How was the understanding of the “Systemic Other” affected by these exchanges at the level of the individual visitors as well as at the level of images generated and sustained among social groups (especially among the actual beneficiaries of the exchanges: East European intellectuals) or in public life (media, arts, etc.) in general? Was Ford Foundation intending to “subvert” the communist socio-political order in Poland, Hungary, or the Soviet Union when they launched, from the late 1950s on, their ambitious programs bringing to the US and other Western countries hundreds of Eastern European academics, cultural personalities, artists? Such activities were observable between the Scandinavian countries and Eastern Europe too. Indeed, Norway is among the last “Western” countries which still continues, with some modifications, such exchanges based on bilateral agreements with Hungary, Poland, Russia and some other countries of the region. Most of these public exchange programs as well as the ones supported by private philanthropies are well documented, with sources accessible in archives.

· Soviet (East European) Communism and Cultural – Intellectual Life in the West: Public Debates and the Impact of the Cold War (especially in Scandinavia)

The Cold War division of the World into a “socialist camp” and “a capitalist” one had soon after the mid-1940s asserted itself as a structuring-organizing factor of public discourses in the West. Positions in literary, cultural, or scientific life were articulated in terms of one’s relationship to the Soviet Union and communist Eastern Europe, and the significance of ideological-political views often overshadowed aesthetic, intellectual, scientific differences. Certain aspects of Cold War cultural/intellectual life in the West have been studied (the study of “fellow travelers”, governmental cultural “foreign policies”, major public controversies, etc.) in some Western societies, but little effort has been spent on the study of Cold War’s impact upon the Scandinavian countries. With their long-standing and highly resistant social-democratic regimes, Sweden and Norway are of particular interest. The projects I would suggest in this respect would visit the reception of important events in Eastern Europe, such as the revolution of 1956 in Hungary, the Prague Spring of the 1960s and its oppression after August 1968, and the Polish Solidarity movement. We will also study such debates as the so called “ubåtsdebatt” in Sweden, or the debate emerging right after 1989 about the relationship between social-democracy and East European state socialism.

For more ideas regarding possible thesis projects, please consult the description of PEECS’ project, “Imagining the West”.