Global histories a student journal East-South Women’s Encounters in the Global History of the Cold War: The Anti- Imperialism of Women’s Activism(s) Clara Fechtner DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/GHSJ.2021.359 Source: Global Histories, Vol. 6, No. 2 (January 2021), pp. 46-70. ISSN: 2366-780X Copyright © 2021 Clara Fechtner License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Publisher information: ‘Global Histories: A Student Journal’ is an open-access bi-annual journal founded in 2015 by students of the M.A. program Global History at Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. ‘Global Histories’ is published by an editorial board of Global History students in association with the Freie Universität Berlin. Freie Universität Berlin Global Histories: A Student Journal Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut Koserstraße 20 14195 Berlin Contact information: For more information, please consult our website www.globalhistories.com or contact the editor at: [email protected]. East-South Women’s Encounters in the Global History of the Cold War: The Anti-Imperialism of Women’s Activism(s) by CLARA FECHTNER 46 Global Histories: a student journal | VI - 2 - 2020 Clara Fechtner | East-South Women’s Encounters in the Global History of the Cold War 47 VI - 2 - 2020 | ABOUT THE AUTHOR Cold War and decolonization processes. Cold War Clara Fechtner holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political degree in Political Clara Fechtner holds a Bachelor’s Studies from Leipzig University and Ghent University in from Leipzig Studies Science from the Philipps-University of Marburg. In 2019, Science from the Philipps-University of Marburg. In 2019, 1945 period, as well as gender perspectives in entangled the socialist camp and the decolonizing world in the post- Global Histories: a student journal she obtained an Erasmus Mundus Master’s degree in Global she obtained an Erasmus Mundus Master’s Belgium. Her research interests include encounters between ABSTRACT solidarity networks This article investigates East-South women’s The paper during the second half of the twentieth century. focuses on the communist East German Democratic Women’s and its transnational relationships with women’s League organizations from the decolonizing world within and beyond International Democratic Federation, the largest the Women’s organization in the post-1945 period. transnational women’s rights In so doing, this article reveals not only how women’s in the broader interactions became an important marker but it also between the socialist camp and the ‘Third World’, rights and its translation how the concept of women’s exposes into practices at different socio-spatial levels gave rise to a transnational configuration of social practices, common symbols, and artefacts. r a W SETTING THE SCENE: EAST- of the whole world aware of the d l o SOUTH WOMEN’S ENCOUNTERS situation of women under state C 4 e IN THE GLOBAL HISTORY OF socialism” , turning the GDR into an h t f international showcase for gender o THE COLD WAR y r equality and cultural advancement. o t s i In its 1959 yearbook, Forging links with H l a the East German women’s organizations in the (post-)colonial b o l organization, known as the world, the transnational activism of G e h Democratic Women’s League the DFD forms part of the academic t n i (DFD) listed its “demonstrations debate on the Global History s r e of solidarity” with women in the of the Cold War, namely that of t n u decolonizing world. By providing East-South connections following o c 5 n financial aid, material donations, Stalin’s death in 1953. Scrutinizing E s ’ and exchanging delegations historical accounts that divide the n e m with women’s organizations from global landscape of the Cold War o W Southern countries, the DFD claimed into superpowers and proxies, h t u to support materially and morally actors from the decolonizing world o S - t the “just struggle for freedom of are increasingly brought to the s a 1 E all oppressed peoples”. Indeed, scene as agents within the global | r by 1963 the DFD had established e n t h contacts with no less than 22 African, c e F 15 Asian, and 11 South American a 4 SAPMO-BArch DY 31/392 r 2 a women’s organizations. Fourteen l Dokumentarische Darstellung, fol. 4. C years later these numbers had almost 5 James Mark, Artemy M. Kalinovsky, and doubled with regard to African and Steffi Marung, Alternative Globalizations. 3 Eastern Europe and the Postcolonial Asian organizations. Under the World (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University banner of anti-imperialist solidarity, Press, 2020), 3; James Mark and Quinn the DFD embarked on a journey to Slobodian, “Eastern Europe in the Global History of Decolonization”, in The Oxford “make young nation states, national Handbook of the Ends of Empire, ed. liberation movements, and women Martin Thomas and Andrew S. Thompson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). The term ‘Third World’ is used following Vijay Prashad and Laura Bier, defining it 1 Foundation Archive of the Parties and “not as a place on a map but as a project, Mass Organizations of the GDR in the as a political imaginary” (Laura Bier, Federal Archives (Stiftung Archiv der Revolutionary Womanhood. Feminisms, Parteien und Massenorganisationen modernity, and the state in Nasser’s Egypt der DDR im Bundesarchiv, henceforth (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, SAPMO-BArch), DY31/1358, “Zur 2011), 156)) that linked colonized and Vorbereitung des Jahrbuches 1959 (Inhalt formerly colonized countries in a common 1958) kurze Angaben über unsere Arbeit”, struggle for freedom and anti-imperialism. 08.01.1959, fol. 36. As a political project, the ‘Third World’ 2 SAPMO-BArch DY 31/1358, Kontakte des encompasses “the hopes and institutions DFD zu Organisationen und Frauen in der created to carry them [peoples of Asia, ganzen Welt, 27.5.1963, fol. 48 ff. Africa, and Latin America] forward” (Vijay 3 SAPMO-BArch DY 31/1358, Beziehungen Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People’s des DFD zu Frauenorganisationenm History of the Third World (New York: The Anfang 1977, fol. 178. New Press, 2007), xv)). 48 Global Histories: a student journal | VI - 2 - 2020 C l a r configuration now recognized as a educational or military sojourns of a F 6 e multipolar conflict. Scholars, for one, actors from the (post-)colonial world c h t explore transnational circulations in countries of the socialist camp are n e r | across the ‘Iron Curtain’ and the nothing new to scholarship, these E a ‘First’, ‘Second’, and ‘Third’ world exchanges are usually not brought s t - S – spatial constructs of dividedness into context with transnational o u t that conventionally prevailed in Cold women’s rights activism. An in-depth h W War historiography. For another, analysis of interactions between o m by building upon concrete cases ‘Second’ and ‘Third World’ women’s e n ’ s of exchange between actors from organizations, however, reveals E n the socialist camp and countries their significance in shaping and c o u of the Global South, scholars contributing to a globalizing women’s n t e r bring to the fore the multifaceted rights discourse in the post-1945 s i 9 n entanglements between the Cold period. What is more, this paper t h e War and decolonization processes. In argues, from the mid-1950s onwards G l o doing so, they also identify particular when the countries of the socialist b a l ideas of modernization and affiliated camp increasingly turned towards H i s programs of development assistance the decolonizing world, interactions t o r y provided by countries of the socialist between respective women’s o f camp and the ‘West’ to newly organizations transformed into an t h 7 e independent countries. important marker in these emerging C o l Yet what remains fairly relationships. d W understudied in this vibrant field of a r research – as is so often the case – is the role of women and their CROSSING BORDERS AND transnational interactions.8 While BLURRING LINES Building off of previous 6 David Engerman, “The Second World’s studies, this research aims at Third World”, Kritika: Explorations in contributing to the historiography of Russian and Eurasian History 12, no. East-South encounters by integrating 1 (2011), 183, https://muse.jhu.edu/ article/411667; Mark, Kalinovsky, and into the global history of the Cold War Marung, Alternative Globalizations, 3. what Kristen Ghodsee labels “Second 7 See most prominently Odd Arne Westad, World-Third World alliances in the The Global Cold War. Third World 10 Interventions and the Making of our Times international women’s movement”. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 200); see also Young-Sun Hong, Cold War Germany, the Third World, and the Global Humanitarian Regime (Cambridge: 9 Celia Donert, “Women’s Rights in Cold War Cambridge University Press, 2015). Europe: Disentangling Feminist Histories”, 8 Except for the work by Kristen Ghodsee. Past and Present, 218 (supplement 8), See Kristen Ghodsee, Second World, (2013), https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gts040. Second Sex: Socialist Women’s Activism 10 Kristen Ghodsee, “Research note: The and Global Solidarity during the Cold War historiographical challenges of exploring (Durham and London: Duke University Second World-Third World alliances in Press, 2019). international women’s movement”, Global Global Histories: a student journal | VI - 2 - 2020 49 r a W By empirically focusing on the DFD processes such as the creation of the d l o and its foreign relationships with North Atlantic Treaty Organization in C e what were considered to be ‘peace- 1949 and the Warsaw Pact in 1955 h t f loving’ women’s organizations informed these perceptions.