Since the early 1990s, pioneering work has been carried out at the University of Trondheim, Norway, under the leadership of György Péteri. This project examines the East-West divide from the vantage point of Eastern Europe and Russia/Soviet Union and also investigates the related dynamics of national identity formation, social and cultural practices, and political mobilization. Imagining the West is one of the products of this international intellectual exchange. Most of the volume's case studies were originally published in a special issue of Kritika and now—supplemented with three additional essays—have been republished as part of the University of Pittsburgh's “Kritika Historical Studies” series.

These essays contribute to the growing literature that opens Communist Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to transnational history. The volume illustrates that the Iron Curtain was far from impenetrable. It may have restricted the movement of people, but it could not totally control the movement of ideas—especially when Communist regimes themselves invited those ideas. One of the volume's stated goal is to question “the issues of systemic divide or systemic identity” of the state Socialist system (4). In other words, most of the studies analyze the interconnectedness of East-West relations and examine the construction of the Socialist model of modernity and the Socialist self in relation to Western European and American cultural and intellectual influences.

These themes emerge in different ways in the individual essays. Catriona Kelly shows the role that children's rights played in the Soviet cultural diplomatic campaign to establish the superiority of the Socialist system and the USSR on the international stage. Greg Castillo's study illustrates the ways in which both the USA and the USSR (and their German “proxy states”) aimed “to annex” the West's cultural heritage. In this competition, both East and West made similar claims as the rightful custodian of Greco-Roman and German cultural heritages, especially in reference to architecture and industrial design. David Crowley examines the dual influence of Socialist-realist architecture (epitomized by Moscow) and Western modernity (represented by Paris) on the reconstruction of Warsaw. Elaine Kelly's entertaining study examines the Richard-Wagner-Festwoche in Dessau, East Germany's answer to West Germany's Bayreuth Festival. She not only depicts the competition between East and West Germany for the ownership of Wagnerian cultural heritage, but also illustrates the complexity of the question of Germanness in the divided nation.

One of the new additions to the volume is Anne E. Gorsuch's article, which refutes the idea of the undiluted triumph of Western/American cultural influence. Instead, by examining five Khrushchev era films, each connected with travel and tourism, she convincingly demonstrates that the Soviet Union itself opened up the country—albeit with significant caveats—to international influences in the form of “celluloid tourism” (166). Paulina Bren investigates the issue of lifestyle—a concept that is admittedly hard to define—during Czechoslovakia's “normalization” period. Bren's study shows that the post-1968 Czechoslovak leadership realized that it could not compete with Western consumerism; instead they offered a characterization of the “good life” in which they promoted the concepts of “self-actualization” and “self-realization” vis-à-vis the materialistic culture of the West. Susan E. Reid's close examination of the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow and its place in Soviet public opinion—also a slippery concept—reminds us that there is still room to study the direct impact of U.S. consumerism on the development of Socialist modernity.

Barbara Walker's study depicts the Soviet dissidents' attitudes toward U.S. journalists, which varied from praise to criticism, and their impact on the self-understanding of the Soviet dissident movement. Karen Gammelgaard shows the influence of travel and travel writing on the nineteenth-century Czech perception of Russia. The once Russophile intellectual elite, disillusioned by the realities of Russian material conditions, social order, and the Russian image of the Czechs, began to emphasize Western and European roots instead of Russian ones. Erik Ingebrigtsen's no less intriguing study illustrates the complex issue of public health in interwar Hungary, particularly the impact of the Rockefeller Foundation's Health Division on the creation of a “Hungarian model” public health system.

The latter two essays, while great examples for the utility of a transnational approach and both praiseworthy in their own right, do not fit in this volume. In my reading, the common denominator of the volume is the rejection of the idea that Socialist modernity and the Socialist self developed in a hermetically sealed vacuum. Instead, as the collection demonstrates, state Socialism was deeply influenced by the West, even as the Communist leadership in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union sought to create an alternative to Western style modernity and self-understanding.

As Michael David-Fox concludes, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union hold great promise for practitioners of transnational history. This volume clearly indicates that understanding the region's history requires us to move beyond the constraints of national histories, as we recognize the importance of interconnectedness and transfers that crossed physical and ideological borders. This inspiring collection points to further sites of research in the fields of cultural and social history, cultural diplomacy, and the history of everyday life. Imagining the West thus deserves a wide audience.