EUI -Scandinavian left-wing intellectuals in the post-war era: ideas, influences, and continental communications 1945-1962

My PhD project examines the ideas and the communication between Scandinavian left-wing intellectuals in the first half of the Cold War, from 1945 to about 1960. My point of departure is the so-called cultural radical circles around the journals Orientering in Norway and Dialog: Dansk tidsskrift for kultur and Internationale Perspektiver in Denmark. My aim is to present the story of a small, but influential milieu on the Scandinavian Left: the culturally minded radicals on the far left in the small but vital space between social democracy and communism, where the opportunities for growth and idea production during the ice cold 1940s and 1950s were slim. Most of these people had been young radicals associated with organisations such as Mot Dag and Clarté in the 1920s and 1930s. I'm interested in how their radical struggle for freedom and socialism in the interwar era was challenged and changed during the Scandinavian social democratic post-war hegemony.

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