Teresa Malice

Transnational Imaginations of Socialism: Town Twinning and Local Government in “Red” Italy and the GDR - Rethinking the Cold War Teresa Malice

Town twinning indicates the postwar phenomenon of administrative exchange between analogous municipalities. Cold War-related research has mostly interpreted it as an instrument to pursue European integration, or to solidify detente "from below". However, municipalities were not only administrative, neutral actors, but also bore political content. This is particularly visible in the case of Italian, communist-guided towns located in the Western bloc, and their twin counterparts in the GDR - strictly pro-Soviet country of the East.

This volume explores the connections initiated by such towns in the 1960s-1970s, focusing on socialist-specific conceptions which fueled the policies implemented by "red" municipalities, in managing local economies and social policies, but also in keeping the activists' transnational microsociability alive. In times of increasing ideological divergences between Eastern and Western communists, such a flourishing communication can appear as partially surprising. The book, though, reveals what still linked the two worlds together, the "bright side of socialism": in this case, a shared imagination of the town based on a socialist horizon - services for workers, equal possibilities, but also a common symbolism.