Papers by Kim Christiaens
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A Global History of Anti-Apartheid, 2019
This chapter will address the relationship between eastern European socialist states and aparthei... more This chapter will address the relationship between eastern European socialist states and apartheid South Africa. Employing material from archives in South Africa, Poland, Hungary and the GDR, and from international organisations that dealt with anti-apartheid (e.g. UN - WFTU - IUS - World Peace Council), this piece will address the changing relationship between apartheid/anti-apartheid and the region’s elites, intellectuals and societies. It explores the support that eastern bloc regimes gave to the anti-apartheid movement in the 1960s, focusing in particular on the importance of new alliances between the region and Africa in a host of international organisations. In the second part, it examines the limitations in these relationships, addressing (a) the increasing entanglement between eastern European Communists and the apartheid regime in the 1980s; (b) the often limited reach of anti-apartheid sentiment in eastern European societies (compared to support for e.g. Vietnam or Chile) ...
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VENTUNESIMO SECOLO, 2020
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Contemporary European History, 2017
Ever since the fall of the Iron Curtain and the enthusiasm it inspired about the potential for Eu... more Ever since the fall of the Iron Curtain and the enthusiasm it inspired about the potential for European unity and democracy, it has become fashionable to see post-war European history in terms of convergence. Historians have researched the integration of the European continent into the global, in the context of the Cold War, decolonisation and economic globalisation. Internally, processes of convergence are seen to link the trajectories of nations on a continent where integration eventually trumped the divisions of nationalism, regionalism and the Iron Curtain. This story of an ‘ever deeper and wider union’ was also reflected in the ways in which the transformations of Southern and Eastern Europe were narrated. The idea of a so-called ‘return to Europe’ inspired histories that connected the fall of right-wing authoritarian regimes in the Southern European states of Portugal, Greece and Spain from the mid-1970s with the end of communism in Eastern Europe from 1989. This dominant acco...
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Dutch Crossing, 2015
This introductory article critically assesses the main themes and issues that have dominated the ... more This introductory article critically assesses the main themes and issues that have dominated the historiography of the Low Countries and Eastern Europe during the Cold War. It reflects on the ways in which new archival sources and trends in international historical research can make the picture of East-West relations more diversified and complex in terms of actors, ideas, and directions. Rather than showing the importance and singularity of the Benelux countries as ‘small states among big powers’, it stresses transnational connections and perspectives, and dismantles some important premises with regards to these countries’ position within the Cold War. In sum, this article wants to make clear that the Low Countries certainly deserve their place in Cold War historiography, not as a primus inter pares, but as an integral part of a wider transnational phenomenon with global but also often very local aspirations and dimensions.
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Archiv Fur Sozialgeschichte, 2016
status: publishe
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Missionary Education, 2021
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East Central Europe
Anti-apartheid advocacy allowed Eastern Bloc countries to reframe their ideological language of s... more Anti-apartheid advocacy allowed Eastern Bloc countries to reframe their ideological language of solidarity towards African countries into a legalist rhetoric during the 1960s and 70s. Support for international anti-racial discrimination law and self-determination from colonial rule reinforced their ties to Africa after the disenchantment of the Hungarian Uprising. Rights activism against apartheid showcased the socialist Bloc’s active contribution to the international rise of human rights language and international law during the Cold War. By the mid-1970s, however, international rights engagement became problematic for most Eastern European states, and dissidents at home eventually appropriated the term apartheid based on decades of state-mandated international rights activism to criticise socialism.
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International Review of Social History
The overthrow of the democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende in Chile and the... more The overthrow of the democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende in Chile and the human rights violations under the military junta of Augusto Pinochet spawned one of the most iconic and sustained human rights campaigns of the Cold War. Human rights scholars have argued that this movement on behalf of Chile signalled the “breakthrough” of human rights as the lingua franca of transnational activism. They have emphasized the global dimensions of these campaigns, which inspired movements mobilizing on behalf of other issues in the Third World. However, such narratives have not been corroborated by research on the campaigns as developed in Europe. Historians have so far focused on the impact of the Chilean crisis in specific countries or on particular organizations, and on the ways in which human rights activism was coloured by local and national contexts. This article aims to shift the scope of the debate by establishing relations with and crossovers from other transnati...
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European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire, 2014
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Tijdschrift voor geschiedenis, 2015
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Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, 2011
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Dutch Crossing, 2015
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Dutch Crossing, 2016
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Journal of Contemporary History
ABSTRACT
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Vingtième Siècle, Revue …, 2011
KULeuven. ...
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Dutch Crossing, 2015
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Papers by Kim Christiaens