The Black Sea Bumping Incident of February 12, 1988, involved two Soviet warships that deliberately bumped (rammed) two US Navy vessels as they conducted a freedom of navigation operation (FONOP) inside the Soviet territorial sea off the coast of Crimea. The US Navy ships USS Yorktown and USS Caron entered waters near the Crimean Peninsula, within the Soviet Union’s 12-mile territorial limit, and transited briefly without providing prior notification or receiving Russian consent. In response, the Soviet Union deployed two warships, the frigate Bezzavetny and the frigate SKR-6, to intercept the US vessels. Then the Bezzavetny deliberately collided with the USS Yorktown, while the SKR-6 rammed the USS Caron. No serious damage or casualties resulted from the bumping incident, but it demonstrated Soviet disagreement with the US exercise of innocent passage without prior notification or permission. The case was an iconic Cold War confrontation to uphold the US policy of freedom of navigation and demonstrates how the US sought to uphold this principle even in contested and geopolitically sensitive waters during the Cold War.

Chapter 6 explores revolutionary world-making projects in the Global South during the Cold War, focusing on anti-imperialist movements. It begins with Fidel Castro’s 1966 call to arms against imperialism, highlighting struggles against colonialism and racism. The chapter examines the Soviet Union’s challenge to capitalism and its interaction with anti-colonial projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, arguing these movements were distinct and sought to repurpose legal sovereignty for Third World assertion. It contrasts socialist and liberal internationalisms, particularly in approaches to self-determination and revolutionary violence, noting the Soviet support for anti-colonial forces. The chapter discusses the influence of Marxist-Leninist thought on revolutionary movements, highlighting projects like Pan-Africanism and Cuban interventionism. It examines national self-determination’s role in reshaping global politics and the challenges new states faced in achieving true independence. The chapter concludes by calling for a re-examination of revolutionary internationalism’s impact on international law, recognising the diverse movements that sought to disrupt the Cold War order.

There has been a longstanding tendency within the domain of Turkish and Comparative Literary Studies to associate the history of Turkish modernism with Nâzım Hikmet’s early career in the Soviet Union by focusing on his mediation of the international avant-garde. While his early futurist poems calling for the abolition of traditional verse are frequently cited as illustrating the emergence of Turkish modernism, his prose poems “The Gioconda and Si-Ya-U” and “Why Did Banerjee Kill Himself?” signify the conclusion of a Soviet-inflected Turkish avant-garde. Acknowledging the importance of Nâzım’s early poetics, this chapter provides a more comprehensive and multifaceted account of Turkish modernism’s “Easterly” trajectory. Scholars of Middle Eastern and Comparative Literary Studies refuse to ascribe any literary value to socialist realist aesthetics, immediately dismissing it as Soviet-sponsored dogma. Challenging this critical “prejudice” against leftist literatures (excepting the avant-garde), this chapter demonstrates that the history of Turkish modernism cannot be understood without exploring its entanglements with the histories of socialist realism and Marxian aesthetics.

Through a series of readings in the modernist and non-modernist Persian and Turkic verse of the twentieth-century communist East, both Middle Eastern and Central Eurasian, this chapter explores how different repertories of poetic forms modeled the transregional literary connections in which their authors and texts participated. The modernist poems discussed in this chapter are among the most famous short works of two of the Middle East’s leading modernists, Nâzım Hikmet and Nīmā Yūshīj, while the neoclassical, neoromantic, or otherwise non-modernist poems are more obscure occasional works, although their authors are important in their respective national canons: the Iranians Abū al-Qāsim Lāhūtī and Muḥammad-Taqī Bahār, the Uzbek Zulfiya Isroilova, and the Azerbaijani Samad Vurghun. This latter cluster of poems is chosen in order to show how much the geopoetics of high modernism in Persian and Turkic owed to communist poetic and rhetorical systems that were at least as ubiquitous, but which have received far less attention from Western scholars.

This chapter discusses the issue of Holocaust distortion and relativization, particularly in the context of far-left ideologies and antisemitism. It explores how certain groups have attempted to reframe the Holocaust narrative to support their political agendas, often in ways that trivialize or distort historical reality. The text delves into specific examples, such as the Norwegian far-left newspaper Klassekampen, which published articles in the late 1970s claiming collaboration between Zionists and Nazis during World War II. These articles distorted historical facts to paint Zionists as complicit in the Holocaust, using selective quotations and misrepresentations to support their narrative. The chapter also examines the role of Soviet propaganda in shaping anti-Zionist and antisemitic narratives, which were then adopted and spread by far-left groups in other countries. It highlights how these narratives often blurred the lines between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitic conspiracy theories. The chapter looks at the impact of the American TV series Holocaust on public discourse and how it sparked debates about historical memory and responsibility.

The epilogue explains what happened to Rudnik, Moiseenko, and their son after they were reunited in 1944. It traces their troubled relationship, Rudnik and Moiseenko’s retirement, and finally their deaths. It also discusses what became of the other major players in the story. Most importantly, it reminds readers that the contest between communism and anti-communism was already a dominant geopolitical feature long before the Cold War, and that the funds and logistics provided by the Far Eastern Bureau played a critical role in keeping the ailing and persecuted Chinese Communist Party from being entirely eliminated. Finally, it argues that the vitriol that characterized ideas about – and treatment of – communists and capitalists in both directions during the 1930s cast a long shadow over diplomatic relationships right down to the present day. Beijing’s mistrust of the West, the West’s mistrust of Beijing and the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union’s mistrust of the West have a very long history. And for a time in the 1930s, the Shanghai Agents were intimately involved in creating that history.

This chapter continues the analysis of the development of anti-Zionism in the Soviet style. Although the rhetoric and symbols could vary, there is a clear connection between the undisguised hatred of Jews that can be found in Russian politicians and thinkers on the extreme right wing of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the anti-Zionism and anti-cosmopolitanism that terrorized Jews in the Soviet Union after World War II and in particular after 1948. The reason was that for many decades Zionism had been seen as a betrayal of real, rooted belonging to Russia. A climax in Stalin’s persecution of Jewish intellectuals came in 1953 with the so-called doctors’ plot. The chapter looks at how the Soviets supported terrorism against Israel as part of the Cold War against the West.

Chapter 2 takes an in-depth look into how area-studies scholarship has explained the wide empirical variation in levels of Eurasian natural gas interdependence across nations and over time. It then lays out the empirical design; it introduces the study’s dependent variable — natural gas interdependence in Eurasia — and discusses the definition, operationalization, and measurement of this dependent variable. Next, it introduced the study’s independent variable, a concept labeled new dominant narratives, and lays out the key independent variables contributing to the rise of new dominant narratives: domestic politics, leaders’ dispositions, and international economic and technological incentives. Finally, the chapter situates the book’s key analytical terms — interdependence, cooperation, gas security, and power in Eurasian gas relations — in the existing literature. It specifies that, in this book, these concepts are not treated as context-less or ultimately “real,” but are seen as historically contingent and understood contextually.

This chapter explores the experiences of hundreds of Kenyan students who travelled to the Soviet Union, East Germany, Bulgaria and other communist states during the late 1950s and 1960s and the politics surrounding them. Initiated for similar reasons as Mboya’s own airlift of students to the United States and expanded in a deliberate effort to compete with Mboya’s programme, the support of students for study in Eastern and Central Europe was a major part of Odinga’s efforts to build his own political base and to address Kenya’s urgent educational needs. After independence in 1963, and with Odinga increasingly in conflict with both Mboya and Kenyatta, these students became a source of considerable political controversy. The fact that some of the students had been sent for military training under agreements struck by nationalist leaders before independent Kenya’s military deals with Britain were finalised meant that returning graduates became the subject of Cold War–inspired rumours of coup plots to support Odinga. With Odinga forced out of the ruling party and government in 1966, the graduates from Eastern and Central Europe were frozen out of senior roles in government.

The meeting between General Francisco Franco’s Spain and Nikita Khrushchev’s Soviet Union in the European Championship final in Madrid in June 1964 is probably the most bitterly contested Cold War football game of all. The two countries had been sworn enemies since they took opposing sides in the bloody Spanish Civil War thirty years earlier. In 1960 Spain was disqualified from the first European Championship after Franco barred the national team from travelling to the Soviet Union for a quarter-final fixture. On home soil four years later, the grudge match against the communist enemy finally happened. Both regimes went to great lengths to outdo their adversary, from disinformation to even contemplating the poisoning of opposition players. Franco used the tournament to showcase his authoritarian, quasi-fascist dictatorship twenty-five years after the Civil War. The Soviets, defending European champions and led by goalkeeping great Lev Yashin, were determined to spoil the party. The final at the Santiago Bernabéu in front of 120,000 spectators saw Spain, inspired by Ballon D’Or winner Luis Suárez, run out 2–1 winners and lift the first major trophy in the country’s history.

This chapter explores the role football played in Cold War South America in the 1970s, including World Cup winners Brazil and Argentina. It focuses on one of the most bizarre one-sided football matches of all time: between Chile and the Soviet Union in Santiago’s Estadio Nacional on 21 November 1973. The Soviets refused to turn up for the match, arguing that Chile’s new leader, General Augusto Pinochet, had recently used the Estadio Nacional to execute left-wing opponents. The game went ahead anyway, lasting all of seventeen seconds. Chile ‘won’ 2–0 and thereby, unlike the Soviet Union, qualified for the 1974 World Cup finals. The chapter shows how the ‘game of shame’ took place at a time when Chile, due to the recent death of Marxist president Salvador Allende, was briefly at the centre of the Cold War. It explores FIFA’s investigation into goings-on at the Estadio Nacional and the international row the match generated. The peculiar Chile–Soviet Union match shows how football could be used as a powerful tool of political protest during the Cold War. It also reveals how political grandstanding could sometimes hide something more mundane – the fear of losing on the pitch.

It’s not often that football friendlies signal war – especially between allies. The game in London between Arsenal and Dynamo Moscow, part of a tour of Britain by the Soviets in November 1945, was meant to celebrate the recent victory over Nazism. But things went badly wrong. Arsenal cheated by fielding ringers like England’s ‘wizard winger’ Stanley Matthews. The game started violently – and got worse. The thick London fog didn’t help, confusing the players and making it virtually impossible for officials and spectators to see the action. After Dynamo’s 4–3 thrilling victory, both sides accused each other of bringing football into disrepute. George Orwell bemoaned the ‘orgies of hatred’ engendered by such encounters, coining his famous phrase that international sport was ‘war minus the shooting’. This chapter investigates football’s role in helping trigger the Cold War in the mid- to late-1940s. It details Dynamo Moscow’s fractious, often comical tour of Britain in the autumn of 1945. It paints a picture of two cultures on collision course, despite the spectators’ amazement at the Soviets’ revolutionary style of play and the visitors’ enthusiasm for British football culture.

Elizabeth Maconchy became Chair of the Composers’ Guild in 1959 and oversaw important diplomatic visits to Canada and the Soviet Union during her tenure. The Guild was ostensibly a professional organisation representing composers’ interests in such matters as BBC opportunities, performing rights’ payments, and film composing. However, as this chapter outlines, its early years up to Maconchy’s tenure were characterised by a concerted effort in diplomacy with countries of the emerging Communist Bloc, particularly under the Chairmanship of Alan Bush from 1947. While Bush’s efforts to align the Guild with similar organisations east of the Iron Curtain were ultimately rejected by the membership, his efforts paved the way for Maconchy’s 1960 visit, and constituted an important example of ‘unofficial’ cultural diplomacy with the Eastern Bloc preceding the more famous state-sponsored visits of Benjamin Britten to the Soviet Union.

This chapter examines Pablo Neruda’s deep and complex relationship with the Soviet Union, as reflected in his memoirs Confieso que he vivido: Memorias (I Confess That I Have Lived: Memoirs, 1974). It explores the poet’s encounters, reflections, and evolving perceptions of the country, its people, and their connections to Chile. It analyzes Neruda’s initial fascination with Soviet socialism and communism and his gradual disillusionment with certain aspects of the regime under Stalin’s leadership. The chapter delves into the complexities of the poet’s political and personal allegiances reflected in his encounters with the prominent figures of the Soviet intelligentsia, such as Ilya Ehrenburg. The comparative analysis of Neruda’s memoirs and poetry allows us to shed light on the intertwined histories of Chile and the Soviet Union, highlighting the enduring impact of Neruda’s Soviet odyssey on his literary work and political convictions.

The chapter explores how alternative futures were imagined in the late state-socialist system, using Soviet Estonia as a case study during the mid-perestroika period in the Soviet Union. In 1987–1988, Estonian reformist intellectuals and experts envisioned Estonia in multiple scenarios like an economically ‘self-manageable’ republic within a renewed Soviet Union, a socialist ‘sovereign’ republic sharing foreign and defence policies with the centre or an independent republic restored as the interwar state. The chapter explores the Estonian perestroika discourse that opened channels for reform discussions in 1987, especially examining the language and concepts used to produce these futures. It highlights how local reformists innovated economic-political vocabulary, facilitating but simultaneously delimiting the imagination of Estonia’s alternative futures. The chapter demonstrates how the innovations with the perestroika language caused unpredicted scenarios in 1988, as the Estonian Declaration of Sovereignty ignited a series of similar declarations in the union republics in 1989–1990.

This chapter examines Cold War liberals’ role in a campaign against “slave labor” in the Soviet Union between 1947 and 1953 that was largely conducted at the United Nations. Although the effort was first spearheaded by the American Federation of Labor, U.S. liberals eventually joined forces with an ideologically diverse set of European actors, and the transatlantic dialogue that ensued offers an opportunity to examine what was distinctive about liberal opposition to Soviet forced labor practices. The chapter argues that, although scholars have long emphasized Cold War liberals’ minimalist orientation toward avoiding cruelty, in comparative terms American liberals stressed the suffering of Soviet gulag victims much less than did their non-liberal continental counterparts. Instead, U.S. liberals offered a highly abstract and legalistic defense of negative liberties, drawing on a selected canon of classical economic arguments for freely contracted labor and a set of civil libertarian principles concerning freedom of opinion. Moreover, after 1951 they seamlessly shifted into different registers as these themes became politically inconvenient. In the end, antipathy to the Soviet regime, rather than a coherent and consistent set of liberal beliefs about either cruelty or the value of workers’ liberty, was the common thread running through Cold War liberals’ “fight for free labor.”