The Centre for Advanced Study Sofia has the pleasure to host the presentation of the book

The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene

by Prof. Dr. Theodora K. Dragostinova (Ohio State University)

21 September 2022 (Wednesday), 17:00 h

Conference Room at CAS, Stefan Karadja str. 7

In The Cold War from the Margins, Theodora K. Dragostinova reappraises the global 1970s from the perspective of a small socialist state—Bulgaria—and its cultural engagements with the Balkans, the West, and the Third World. During this anxious decade, Bulgaria’s communist leadership invested heavily in cultural diplomacy to bolster its legitimacy at home and promote its agendas abroad. Bulgarians traveled the world to open museum exhibitions, show films, perform music, and showcase the cultural heritage and future aspirations of their “ancient yet modern” country.

As Dragostinova shows, these encounters transcended the Cold War’s bloc mentality: Bulgaria’s relations with Greece and Austria warmed, émigrés once considered enemies were embraced, and new cultural ties were forged with India, Mexico, and Nigeria. Pursuing contact with the West and solidarity with the Global South boosted Bulgaria’s authoritarian regime by securing new allies and unifying its population. Complicating familiar narratives of both the 1970s and late socialism, The Cold War from the Margins places the history of socialism in an international context and recovers alternative models of global interconnectivity along East-South lines.

Prof. Dr. Teodora Dragastinova is Associate Professor of Modern European and East European History at The Ohio State University, USA. As a graduate of the Classical High School, she received her BA in History from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and her PhD in History from the University of Illinois, USA. Dragostinova is the author of Between Two Motherlands: Nationality and Emigration among the Greeks of Bulgaria, 1900–1949 (Cornell University Press, 2011) and editor, with Yana Hashimova, of Beyond Mosque, Church, and State: Alternative Narratives of the Nation in the Balkans (CEU Press, 2016). Her most recent book, The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Stage, was published in May 2021 with Cornell University Press and is available to download for free download from their website.