Project Description
Cold War Europe Beyond Borders - A Transnational History of Cross-Border Practices in the Alps-Adriatic Area
The project aims at rethinking Cold War Europe by examining the development of transnational cross-border cooperation between "East" and "West". Overcoming traditional visions of a clear-cut European separation symbolized by the Berlin Wall, the research plan follows a decentralized analysis of recent European history. Adapting the fortunate terms “Provincializing Europe” by Dipesh Chakrabarty and “Provincializing European Union” by Kiran Klaus Patel to the European Cold War period, I will try at “Provincializing Berlin” to rethink the recent European history from the margins. To do this, the project focuses on the Alps-Adriatic region, a historical area that is now shared by Austria, Italy, Slovenia and Croatia. During the Cold War it was divided among socialist but non-aligned Yugoslavia, capitalist but neutral Austria, and NATO and EEC member Italy, and it developed from the "southern end" of the Iron Curtain in 1946 to the "most open border" during the Cold War and a precursor to present-day Schengen Europe.
An important part of the project addresses the interplay between top-down politics and bottom-up initiatives in cross-border cooperation during the Cold War. In which forms did everyday cross-border interactions take place? How did everyday life by the border relate to the official policy? What kind of effect did the reality of these areas have on the inhabitants: who interacted with which expectations? What are the methods used in cross-border cooperation?
Personal Bio
Borut Klabjan is a historian, with research specialties in the political and social history of Central and Southeast Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century. Currently he is Principal Investigator of the ERC Advanced Grant Cold War Europe beyond Borders. A transnational history of cross-border practices in the Alps-Adriatic area from World War II to the present hosted at the Science and Research Centre in Koper, where he works as Principal Research Fellow. He also teaches as Associate Professor at the Department of History, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. He has been Humboldt Fellow at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Visiting Fellow at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. His articles were published in nine languages, and he is co-editor and author of five multi-lingual volumes. His last edited volume Borderlands of Memory. Adriatic and Central European Perspectives was recently published by Peter Lang Oxford in the series Cultural Memories, while his last book in Slovene Ogenj ki je zajel Evropo. Narodni dom v Trstu 1920-2020 (The fire that embraced Europe. The story of the Narodni dom in Trieste 1920-2020), will be published in Italian in 2023 (Battesimo di Fuoco. L’incendio del Narodni dom di Trieste e l’Europa adriatica nel XX secolo. Storia e memoria).