Sandrine Kott: "A World More Equal. An Internationalist Perspective on the Cold War"

In this edition of Druckfrisch Book Discussion, Sandrine Kott (Université de Genève) discussed her book “Organiser le monde. Une autre histoire de la guerre froide” (SEUIL) with Katja Castryck-Naumann (GWZO), Antje Dietze (SFB1199), and Martin Deuerlein (University of Tübingen). An English translation of the book is now available under the title “A World More Equal. An Internationalist Perspective on the Cold War” at Columbia University Press.

By adopting an international perspective, the book challenges the usual interpretation of the post-World War II period too often reduced to the Cold War seen as a global conflict between the United States and the USSR that would have dominated international affairs. This book looks at international organizations and associations as stages on which the Cold War discourse was deployed, but which are above all, especially their secretariats, spaces for dialogue and working together across the ideological divisions of the Cold War. It tells the story of this period through the prism of internationalism as an ideology and a social practice.

Druckfrisch Book Discussion is an event series by ReCentGlobe and the European Network in Universal and Global History (ENIUGH).

This edition was organized in cooperation with:

• Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 1199: “Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition”
• Leipzig Centre for the Study of France and the Francophone World
• Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO)