| Popis: |
This article examines the issue of international cooperation on the platform of selected international organizations during the late Stalin era at the beginning of the Cold War, approximately between 1947 and 1953. A number of historians such as Kaplan and Prucha in their monographs highlight the flows of information, capital and technology solely within the Eastern Bloc, but as the newly accessible UN archives in Geneva reveal, even the period of Stalin's strongly authoritarian rule was characterized by hitherto under-appreciated cross-Curtain ties instrumental in forging diplomatic dialogue, trade and scientific-technical cooperation. The present article analyses these ties on the platform of selected international organizations, namely the UN Economic Commission for Europe and the International Monetary Fund. The selection of these organizations was not arbitrary. Preliminary research of their archival material has outlined their crucial role in the formation of inter-bloc dialogue at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s. The present paper devotes particular attention to the role of Czechoslovakia and its delegates on the above-mentioned platforms. It turns out that it was Czechoslovakia that was able to emerge as an actor mediating and proactively shaping East-West dialogue and different cooperation projects. Although this Central European state was part of the Eastern Bloc, the strong traditional ties of Czechoslovak diplomacy and economy to Western Europe were not completely deconstructed at the beginning of the Cold War, thus enabling Czechoslovakia to become an imaginary bridge between the two halves of the Iron Curtain. |
