How Socialism Went Global – and Why It Withdrew. An Alternative Global History

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, three authors of the new collective monograph Socialism Goes Global. The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the Age of Decolonisation, Péter Apor, James Mark, and Steffi Marung, dissect the relationship between eastern Europe and the extra-European world in the age of decolonization; explain how key East European traditions of relating to the extra-European world have evolved over time; analyse the extent to which long-standing civilizational and racial hierarchies were overcome, or perhaps reproduced, via East–South connections during the Cold War; show how the study of this alternative form of globalization can help us reconsider the end of European state socialism; and discuss some of the key contemporary consequences and legacies of socialist world-making today.

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James Mark is a Professor of History at the University of Exeter

Steffi Marung is the Director of the Global and European Studies Institute of Leipzig University

Péter Apor is a senior research fellow (tudományos főmunkatárs) in contemporary history at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Socialism Goes Global. The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the Age of Decolonisation, coordinated by James Mark and Paul Betts, is published by Oxford University Press. Its main contributors are – next to Péter Apor, Paul Betts, James Mark, and Steffi Marung – Alena Alamgir, Eric Burton, Bogdan Iacob, and Radina Vučetić.