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Abstract
Over the past few years, there has been growing interdisciplinary interest in the history of European solidarity movements that mobilized on behalf of the ‘Third World’ in the wake of the post-war decolonization process. Focusing on European campaigns against the Vietnam War and Pinochet’s Chile, this article aims at positioning these international solidarity movements in the broader history of North–South and East–West exchanges and connections in Europe during the Cold War. It explores some key ideas, actors and alternative networks that have remained little studied in mainstream accounts and public memories, but which are key to understanding the development of transnational activism in Europe and its relevance to broader fields of research, such as the history of Communism, decolonization, human rights, the Cold War and European identity. It delves into the impact of East–West networks and the Communist ‘First World’ in the discovery of the Third World in Western Europe, analyses the role of Third World diplomacy in this process, and argues how East–West and North–South networks invested international solidarity campaigns on ‘global’ issues with ideas about Europe’s past and present. Together, these networks turned resistance against the Vietnam War, human-rights violations in Pinochet’s Chile, and other causes in the Third World into themes for détente and pan-European cooperation across the borders of the Iron Curtain, and made them a symbol to build a common identity between the decolonized world and Europe. What emerges from this analysis is both a critique of West-centred narratives, which are focused on anti-totalitarianism, as well as an invitation to take North–South and East–West contacts, as well as the role of European identities, more seriously in the international history of human rights and international solidarity.
Notes
1. Solarz, “Third World.”
2. Kalter, “From Global to Local and Back;” Friedman, Shadow Cold War.
3. Elbaum, “What Legacy.”
4. Christiansen and Scarlett, “Introduction.”
5. Horn, The Spirit of '68.
6. Thörn, Anti-Apartheid.
7. Kelly, “The 1973 Chilean Coup.”
8. About the concepts of “Third World,” “South,” and “Global South:” Rigg, An Everyday Geography.
9. Christofferson, French Intellectuals, 8.
10. Kalter, “A Shared Space.”
11. Courtois, Le Livre Noir.
12. Van Toai, Le goulag vietnamien.
13. Gildea, Mark, and Pas, “European Radicals.”
14. Grosser, “Looking for the Core of the Cold War.”
15. Pons, The Global Revolution, 277.
16. Engerman, “The Second World’s Third World.”
17. Slobodian, Comrades of Color.
18. Kaelble, Sozialgeschichte Europas, 315.
19. Klimke, Pekelder, and Scharloth, Between Prague Spring and French May.
20. Horn, The Spirit of '68.
21. Suri, Power and Protest, 171–82.
22. Landelijk Vietnam Comité (The Netherlands), Archives Konrad Boehmer, IISH, Amsterdam.
23. Pas, Sortir de l’ombre du parti communiste.
24. Slobodian, Foreign Front.
25. Klimke, Pekelder, and Scharloth, Between Prague Spring and French May, 57.
26. Dujardin, “La Belgique.”
27. Christiaens, Goddeeris, and Rodríguez García, European Solidarity.
28. Cœuré, “Les voyages.”
29. Roberts, “Averting Armageddon;” For a criticism: Betts, “Socialism, Social Rights, Human Rights.”
30. Wittner, Resisting the Bomb.
31. Christiaens, “From the East to the South.”
32. Jachec, Europe’s Intellectuals.
33. WFDY News, May, 1960, no. 11, 3.
34. Grossmann, “Dealing with ‘Friends.’”
35. Solidarité avec le Vietnam. Bulletin d'information du bureau de la conférence internationale de solidarité avec le peuple du Vietnam contre l'agression impérialiste américaine, pour la défense de la paix, no. 12, November-December, 1965, 10; Schlaga, Die Kommunisten in der Friedensbewegung, 220–1.
36. Wernicke, “The World Peace Council.”
37. Bulletin of the World Council of Peace 12, no. 13, December 1965, 4; Le Monde, no. 21/22, August 8, 1965.
38. Hong, Cold War Germany.
39. Brogi, Confronting America, 258.
40. Meeting of the secretariat of the World Peace Council in Prague, February, 1967, Archives Isabelle Blume (Unclassified), CarCob, Brussels.
41. Informationszentrum des Weltfriedensrates, Chile ist nicht allein. Internationale Solidaritätskonferenz für das Chilenische Volk, Helsinki, 29–30 September 1973.
42. Socialist Affairs, no. 23/6, November–December 1973, 110.
43. World Congress of Peace Forces 1973. Bulletin 2, October 27, 1973, 1.
44. Chile: News Service, no. 19–20, 1973, 9.
45. Rupprecht, Soviet Internationalism, 280.
46. Thi Binh, “The Vietnam War and its Lessons,” 455–9.
47. Rucht, “Distant Issue Movements.”
48. Slobodian, Foreign Front.
49. Moyn, The Last Utopia; Burke, Decolonization.
50. Brigham, Guerrilla Diplomacy.
51. Lien-Hang Nguyen, “Revolutionary Circuits.”
52. Mehta, “Restoring Agency.”
53. Nehring and Ziemann, “Do all Paths lead to Moscow?”
54. Vrede. Maandblad voor internationale politiek en vredesproblemen 14, no. 103, May 1971, 2.
55. “2 Dagen voor Vietnam,” April 1968, Archives Isabelle Blume, CarCob, Brussels.
56. Mehta, “People's Diplomacy.”
57. Bulletin d’Information. Association médicale franco vietnamienne, no. 1, November 1967, 1.
58. Aide Médicale au Viet-Nam. Bulletin édité par le Secrétariat de Coordination des Associations Médicales européennes d’aide au Viet-Nam, no. 1, August 1968, 1.
59. Bulletin d'Information. Association médicale franco vietnamienne, no. 1 (November 1967), 1; Letter from Marcel-Francis Kahn, October 18, 1967, 363, Dutch Medical Vietnam Committee, IISH, Amsterdam.
60. Mulas, Allende e Berlinguer, 193.
61. Letter from National Liberation Front (NLF) Delegation in Prague, August 24, 1965, Archives Dutch Communist Party, 1384, IISH, Amsterdam.
62. News Bulletin from the Danish Vietnam Committees, 1968, 4, Archives Benno Groeneveld, IISH, Amsterdam.
63. Christiaens, Goddeeris, and Rodríguez García, European Solidarity.
64. Christiaens, “The Difficult Quest for Chilean Allies.”
65. Van Hieu, Ban be ta khap nam chau, 12–19.
66. L’autre Grèce, no. 11–12, November 19, 1973, 14.
67. Palieraki, “‘Le Chili est proche.’”
68. PAK Newsletter, vol. 2, January 1973, 1–2.
69. Kornetis, “‘Cuban Europe;’” Speech by Lelio Basso in Bremen, 1978, Palestina, 1, B. 4, Fasc. 11, Fondazione Lelio e Lisli Basso Issoco, Rome.
70. See for instance: Jensen, The Making of International Human Rights.
71. Davey, Idealism beyond Borders.
72. Hilte, When the Romance Ended.
73. Letter from Konrad Boehmer to the Union of Vietnamese Musicians (Hanoi), September 6, 1972, Archives Konrad Boehmer, IISH, Amsterdam.
74. See for instance: American Use of War Gases and World Public Opinion.
75. Mark and von der Goltz, “Encounters.”
76. Mark et al., “‘We Are with You, Vietnam.’”
77. Gildea, Mark, and Pas, “European Radicals and the ‘Third World’.”
78. Gildea, Mark and Warring, Voices of Revolt; Michnik, Letters from Freedom, 99.
79. Social Democracy and Eurocommunism, International Department British Labour Party, 1977–78/141, 192, Archives Barbara Castle, Bodleian Library, Oxford.
80. Camacho Padilla, “The Swedish-Chilean Society.”
81. Shubin and Traikova, “There is no Threat from the Eastern Bloc.”
82. See for instance Christiaens, Goddeeris, and Rodríguez García, European Solidarity.
83. Christiaens, “From the East to the South.”
84. See for instance: Letter from F. Zakharov, vice president of the Soviet Red Cross, to Professor André Roussel, president of the Medical Association France Vietnam, 15 December 1971, 362, Dutch Medical Vietnam Committee, ISSH, Amsterdam.
85. Kornetis, “Cinema and Anti-Imperialist Resistance,” 474.
86. Moine, “Votre combat est le nôtre.”
87. Bulletin belge du mouvement international Pax Christi, August–September, 1969, 8; Documents relating to the conference on security and cooperation in Europe, 1968, DY 30.13773, Bundesarchiv, Berlin.
88. Zourek, Checoslovaquia, 173.
89. Horten, “Sailing in the Shadow of the Vietnam War.”
90. Moine, “‘Votre combat est le nôtre.’”
91. Christiaens, “The Difficult Quest for Chilean Allies.”
92. Report of the Moscow Conference of Peace Forces, 1973, Archives Isabelle Blume, CarCob, Brussels.
93. Brier, “Poland’s Solidarity,” 99–100.
94. Free Labour World, 391/392, 1983, 6–9.
95. Dieter Gawora, Lateinamerika hier. Zur Entwicklung der internationalen Solidaritätsarbeit in der Bundesrepublik. Entwicklungsperspektiven. GhK, 9/10 (1983): 77, 87.
96. Christiaens and Goddeeris, “The East versus the South.”
97. Christiaens and Goddeeris, “Solidarność and Latin America in the 1980s.”
98. See for instance: Bracke and Mark, “Between Decolonization and the Cold War;” Jensen, The Making of International Human Rights; Hansen and Jonsson, Eurafrica.
99. Nicolaidis, “The Power of the Superpowerless,” 101.
100. Castaño, “‘A Practical Test.’”
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