The Cold War and Regions of Memory

One of the most striking features of the Cold War is the simultaneous growth and unevenness of its remembering. While a handful of museums and galleries invoke the Cold War in title and as an overarching organizing framework, most Cold War remembering occurs in ways in which the global and hierarchical nature of the “war” are diminished. Importantly, the chapter suggests that this enables new mnemonic connections within regions and between and within nation states more than might be possible with more rigid applications of the term. Thus, while the Cold War is not easily remembered in the pantheon of other modern world wars, its explanatory limitations help produce regions of memory more readily. Through case studies of common past experiences joining shared hopes and demands in Europe and in Asia, the authors show that a flexible sense of boundaries attaching to the idea of Cold War, including a capacity to invoke it more than be scripted by it, is producing dynamic interactions between different agencies of remembering and new or renewed senses of region.