Natasa Miskovic: The Non-Aligned Movement and the Cold War 2015-4-055 Miskovic, Natasa; Harald Fischer-Tiné, Nada Boskovska (Hrsg.): The Non-Aligned Movement and the Cold War. Delhi - Bandung - Belgrade. London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 2014. ISBN: 978-0-415-74263-4; 232 S. Rezensiert von: Arno Trültzsch, GWZO, Uni- versität Leipzig More than a quarter century after the collap- se of real socialism and the end of the Cold War, historians rediscover this decisive era, which consumed almost the complete second half of the last century. In this vein of reassess- ment, scholarly focus has continuously shif- ted to the historical role of the so-called non- aligned and neutral states in the Cold War arena. Various conferences 1 and monographs 2 have contributed to a revival of this parti- cular field of global historiography. Both in- spired by postcolonial and classic Cold War studies, new approaches reach beyond the- se frames, concentrating on certain networks, agents and regional dimensions of political activity „beyond the blocs“. Both the Euro- pean context of „perforating the iron curtain“ 3 and the reactions from the Global South to the bloc division, i.e. Afro-Asian solidarity and non-alignment resonate in the articles of this collective volume, edited by Nataša Miško- vi´ c, Harald Fischer-Tiné and Nada Boškovs- ka. It has come out as a volume of Routledge’s modern Asian history series, despite its Euro- pean and African side dimensions. The book is both the result of a conference held at Zu- rich University 4 , Miškovi´ c’s and Boškovska’s home institution, and their personal research on Yugoslav entanglements and the begin- nings of the Non-aligned movement (pp. xv- xvii/p. 9). Thus the reader encounters a wi- de array of themes covered by a dozen scho- lars with different regional focus and back- ground, bound together by a chronological or- der in three parts: „Afro-Asian solidarity“ as the starting point before 1945, „Cold War ent- anglements“ as the backbone of the book and „A voice in the international system“ as a con- cluding chapter on tangible impact and effects on non-alignment. Nataša Miškovi´ c introduces the main ob- jectives of the volume: tracing the diver- se origins of non-alignment, both topical and regional, and how the concepts around it evolved (notably anti-colonialism, anti- imperialism, peaceful coexistence, the call for self-determination and the fight against ra- cism and global economic inequalities). She notices very correctly that until this day „re- search on non-alignment is indeed scarce“ (p. 1), especially in terms of historicizing ac- counts. 5 Like other contributors to the vol- ume, Miškovi´ c emphasizes the two strands that helped form non-alignment in the end: the transnational anticolonial struggle star- ting long before 1945, marked by Afro-Asian solidarity (Bandung 1955) and turning stea- dily into the economic North-South dimensi- on, and the emerging Cold War and its pro- blems arising for small and newly independ- ent countries. These strands overlapped of course, notably in the struggle against impe- rialism, which was often directed at the West but increasingly also at the Soviet-Socialist sense of mission in the so-called Third World. Non-alignment’s most practical achievement is its impact on the United Nations: secu- ring a vast majority in the General Assembly 1 Cf. this recent event at the History department of Lau- sanne University: „The Role of the Neutrals and Non- Aligned in the Global Cold War, 1949-1989“ (13 to 15 March 2014), see the report: <http://www.hsozkult.de /conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-5499>. 2 E.g. Jürgen Dinkel, Die Bewegung Bündnisfreier Staa- ten. Genese, Organisation, Politik (1927–1992), Mu- nich 2015; Thomas Fischer, Neutral Power in the CS- CE. The N+N States and the Making of the Helsinki Accords 1975, Baden-Baden 2009; Rinna Kullaa, Non- Alignment and Its Origins in Cold War Europe. Yugos- lavia, Finland and the Soviet Challenge, London 2012. 3 Cf. e.g. Thomas Fischer, Bridging the Gap between East and West. The N+N as Catalysts of the CSCE Process, 1972-1983, in: Poul Villaume / Odd Arne Westad (eds.), Perforating the Iron Curtain European Détente, Trans- atlantic Relations, and the Cold War, 1965–1985, Copen- hagen 2010. 4 The conference was organised together with Harald Fischer-Tiné (also co-editor of the volume) and held at both institutions in June 2011 under the title „The Cold War and the Postcolonial Moment: Prehistory, Aims and Achievements of the Non-Aligned Move- ment, 50 Years after Belgrade“ (p. xvi/9), see the re- port: <http://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id /tagungsberichte-3719>. 5 A notable exception is Tvrtko Jakovina’s opus ma- gnum, which is only available in its original Croatian edition and could therefore raise only little attention outside former Yugoslavia: Tvrtko Jakovina, Tre´ ca Stra- na Hladnog Rata (The Third Side of the Cold War). Za- greb 2011. © H-Net, Clio-online, and the author, all rights reserved.