Marxist Historians, Communist Historical Cultures and Transnational Relations in Western Europe in the 1950s and 1960s

Abstract

While the structures of the Marxist history cultures of the communist parties are known in their outlines on the national level, little is known about their transnational relationships, although research on contemporary history during the last years has found that the relations between the European communist parties had considerable influence on the development of policy and ideology during the Cold War. Hence, this article will examine and assess the significance of the transnational intellectual exchange in the historical cultures of Western European communist movements between the end of the Second World War and the 1960s. This is not to say that the era between the late 1940s and the mid-1960s was a good time for the free exchange among communist intellectuals. The communist nationalism of the popular front years became more radical after 1945 and took on chauvinist features in the early period of the Cold War. The communist parties presented themselves as the standard bearers of the national cultural heritage, and their leaders were celebrated, along the lines of the Stalinist personality cult, as embodiments not only of the working class but also of the nation as a whole. The critical examination of Stalinism during the XXth Congress of the CPSU in 1956 did very little to open up the party to new ideas and remained steeped in taboos well into the 1960s.