Imagining the World from Behind the Iron Curtain

All too often, the countries of the former Soviet bloc are depicted as isolated lands of totalitarian oppression, locked away until they could rejoin the flow of global history after 1989. As Malgorzata Fidelis persuasively argues, nothing could be further from the truth. This fascinating study of youth culture in the 1960s places Poland in a truly global context, showing that the tumultuous events of that decade were more complicated and multifaceted than we ever imagined. This book is mandatory reading for anyone interested in the cultural or social history of the Cold War era, East or West. * Brian Porter-Szucs, author of Poland in the Modern World: Beyond Martyrdom * In this exciting and groundbreaking study, Malgorzata Fidelis breaches the analytic Iron Curtain separating sixties youth revolts in East and West, writing the Polish Sixties into the global history of which they were a part. Impressive in breadth and detail, this indispensable book belongs on every global 1960s reading list. * Timothy Scott Brown, Northeastern University * Imagining the World represents a long overdue and much needed endeavor to write Eastern Europe into the history of the global 1960s. Malgorzata Fidelis does so with verve, conviction, and scholarly rigor, taking the reader across the entirety of Poland's social landscape. We learn about urban bohemians as well as rural rebels. We delve into the lofty dreams and unabashed internationalism of Poland's hippie community. And we witness how authorities attempt to domesticate the wild and unregulated transnationalism of the era by forcing it into the new framework of consumer socialism. By the time the journey ends in the mid-1970s, it has become more than evident that global counterculture did not stop at the Iron Curtain. Indeed, the implication is that if the world had paid more attention to youth culture(s), the collapse of socialism in Europe should not have come as such a surprise. * Juliane Furst, author of Flowers Through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland *