The Friendship Project: Socialist Internationalism in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and 1960s

Abstract

This article examines the evolution of socialist internationalism in the 1950s and 1960s through a case study of cultural relations between the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. More broadly, it explores attempts by Soviet and eastern bloc officials to integrate their countries into a cohesive “socialist world” by constructing an extensive network of transnational, cultural, interpersonal, and commercial ties between their citizens. Accounts of Soviet-eastern bloc relations during this period tend to focus on the iconic crises in Poland and Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Yet in the realm of everyday life, the 1950s and 1960s were the apogee of Soviet-eastern European integration. I argue that in the case of Soviet-Czechoslovak relations, the new version of socialist internationalism that developed during these decades was successful in so far as it shaped the lives of ordinary citizens—through participation in friendship societies, pen-pal correspondences, and the consumption of each other's mass media and consumer goods. As these contacts brought the two countries closer, however, they inadvertently highlighted cultural and political discord between them, which ultimately helped undermine the very alliance they were designed to support.