”As a historian of India in the Cold War, the period only also makes sense to me as one of widespread and intense decolonisation, both in terms of actual shifts in ruling power but also in terms of political culture as consumed and experienced globally. Especially the years of the early Cold War have so…

”In a way, I am a product of the Cold War. My parents met at an Euromissile protest in Comiso, Sicily. So, I don’t even know if my whole existence would have been possible without the Dual Track Decision. The Cold War was also the context within which most of my childhood happened. I remember…

”It means the first, and formative, three decades of my life, highlighted by films like Clint Eastwood’s Firefox, songs like ‘Back to the USSR’ and novels like The Spy Who Came In from the Cold. Also, the memory of a friend from West Germany, who, as late as 1986, argued that the two Germanies would…

”It is the period in which I grew up and which shaped me. Only in retrospect – especially by studying history – did I realise how many images and prejudices I had been brought up with. That is why I love the fact that that Cold War ended so abruptly and I am still able…

”For me, the Cold War is a parable about humanity’s ability to overcome the challenges it faces. Who could have imagined that the greatest excesses of violence in our history, the World Wars, would be followed by such a prolonged period of relative peace? Time and time again, from the beginning of the Cold War…

”Although I didn’t live in the USA or Europe, I lived through part of the Cold War in my childhood and adolescence. Some things made a very big impression on my memory: The specter of a nuclear war, when Operation Able Archer occurred in 1983, when the United States started the Star Wars Project, when…

‘‘In relation to the present, the Cold War was possibly the last moment in which ideologies that responded to different values and utopias confronted each other. The driving force behind the forces of the countries of the global South was primarily sovereignty and freedom. They sought self-determination and management of their own resources without interference…

‘‘The Cold War to me is a constant reminder of the need to ‘get the details right’ in order to avoid catastrophe. Mistakes are unavoidable in life, but utter destruction may be optional. If one has a warped/inaccurate view of the past, then one’s view of the present will also be warped. If one does…

”As someone who was born in 1992, not long after the events of Black May, which were a bunch of protests that happened in Bangkok against the military government of the time, the Cold War was the time when having a military government became a norm in the Thai domestic politics. As the influence of…

“The Cold War is one of the two ideological struggles that structures 20th century international relations besides decolonisation. The East-West struggle between capitalism and communism was one struggle, the fight between imperialism and anticolonialism was another struggle.”