East-South Women Internationalism at the Cold War Periphery - by Yulia Gradskova (Hardcover)

About the Book

Examines women's gatherings, internationalism, political travel, and networks through questioning established geopolitical categories broadly understood as Cold War peripheries.

Book Synopsis

This open access book by Yulia Gradskova examines women's internationalism and gatherings in the places understood as Cold War peripheries.

East-South Women Internationalism at the Cold War Periphery: Coming Together in Tashkent, Havana, and Beyondexamines women's gatherings, internationalism, political travel, and networks through questioning established geopolitical categories. While female "political tourists" coming to cities like Tashkent and Havana cannot be seen as free from neither the superpowers' open and hidden confrontational agendas nor from Cold War surveillance and pressures, Gradskova demonstrates that they significantly contributed to the advancement of transnational women's rights. Simultaneously, East-South Women Internationalism at the Cold War Periphery contributes to the growing field of decolonial criticism regarding the "second world" emancipation project by detailing how its vision of progress hindered many other voices and visions of the future from being heard. Gradskova's attention to the mundane problems and pleasures of traveling, coming together, and writing letters allows for distinguishing implicit details of curiosity, emotional attachment as well as (self) censorship and hierarchies; in turn, helping to reconstruct parts of women's robust and complex participation in the building of the transnational connectivity trespassing the Cold War division lines.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

Review Quotes

Gradskova's analysis beautifully outlines dimensions of women's political lives and selves that are frequently overlooked in studies of the Cold War. This book brings to life meetings, strategies, discussions and debates in which women proposed visions of a better future and fought for what they believed. It should be essential reading for anyone interested in how women aspired to shape the decolonizing world.
Jessica Stites Mor, University of British Columbia, Canada

About the Author

Yulia Gradskova is Associate Professor of History and research coordinator at the Center for Baltic and East European Studies at Södertörn University, Sweden. Gradskova is the author of The Women's International Democratic Federation, the Global South and the Cold War: Defending the Rights of Women of the 'Whole World'? (2020), and Soviet Politics of Emancipation of Ethnic Minority Women. Natsionalka (2018).