The End of the Cold War and the Search for a New Political Order in Europe - Detailseite

Why did the Cold War come to a peaceful end? And how can the development of the ensuing new political order in Europe be understood in retrospect?

The seminar begins with a look at the economic upheavals of the 1970s and assesses the political consequences and reorientations that followed in East and West as a reaction to them. The years after 1989 then brought a profound caesura. The dissolution of the USSR in 1991 marked the end of an era. At the same time, the outbreak of the Yugoslav Wars proved to be another extremely critical experience for the emerging "post-Cold War" system. All these experiences were to have far-reaching effects on the reorganisation of European norms, institutions and security policies in the course of the 1990s and 2000s.

The seminar will focus on this search for a new international order for Europe and the world, the concrete form of which was not yet foreseeable after the collapse of the old one. What insights can be gained by recapitulating the relevant developments from the 1970s to the late 2000s from a historical perspective?

Verdery, Catherine: What Was Socialism and What Comes Next? Princeton: Princeton University Press 1996.

Brunnbauer, Ulf/Grandits, Hannes: The Ambiguous Nation: Case Studies from Southeastern Europe in the 20th Century, Munich: Oldenbourg 2013.

Ther, Philipp: Europe After 1989. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press 2016 / Ibid. Die neue Ordnung auf dem alten Kontinent. Berlin: Suhrkamp 2014.

Bartels, Fritz: Broken Promises. The End of the Cold War and the Rise of Neoliberalism. Cambridge, London: Harvard Univ. Press 2022.

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