TRANSNATIONAL IMAGINATIONS OF SOCIALISM : town twinning and local government in "red" italy... and the gdr, 1960s-1970s

Town twinning refers to 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 détente "from below". However, municipalities were not only administrative, neutral actors, but also bearers of political content. This is particularly visible in the case of Italian towns located in the Western bloc, guided by socialist-oriented administrations, and their "twin" counterparts in the German Democratic Republic. 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 maintaining a lively and interconnected transnational microsociability among grassroots activists. Despite the increasing ideological divergences between Eastern and Western communists, and between Italian democratic communists and the more dogmatic and repressive, strictly pro-Soviet ones in the GDR, communication continued to flourish on the local level. The book explores what still linked the two worlds together, the "bright side of socialism": in this case, a common symbolism related to the past, practical exchanges in the present dimension, and a shared future imagination and conception of the town on the basis of a socialist horizon, built around welfare and services for citizens and workers. 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 dtente "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. The peer-reviewed series offers books that illuminate the multifaceted history of the Cold War in both its European and Global dimensions, across and beyond the Iron Curtain. It focuses on the interactions, interdependencies and co-operation of Eastern state socialist countries (and their citizens) with Western capitalist, Latin American, African and non-aligned states (and their citizens), as well as with China