TOWN TWINNING IN THE COLD WAR WORLD
TOWN TWINNING IN THE COLD WAR WORLD

Summary/Abstract: Town twinning refers to a practice of creating bonds between pairs of towns located in different countries in order to enable interactions between municipalities and townspeople in such fields as culture, education and local development. As an extensive and organized activity, town twinning started in the afiermath of the Second World War to provide material aid to those who had suffered Pom the war and to promote Piendship and mutual understanding between former enemies. Owing to this kind of background, town twinning contained intrinsic potential for transnational interaction and for bridging divides. Yet Pom the 1950s, town twinning started to play a role in the cultural Cold War as one of those means which were used in the competition for cultural and political influence by both blocs. In the West, town twinning with western partners was encouraged in order to reinforce its cultural legacy against communism. Along with this kind of a bonding model of twinning, a so called bridging model appeared as relationships were established between East and West bloc towns. Even though East – West twinning activities obviously were characterized by the Cold War spirit of rivalry, they should not merely be considered Pom the viewpoint of such competition. In accordance with its original idea, town twinning also enabled encounters between people living on the opposite sides of the Iron Curtain and, therefore, the dimension of interaction should not be neglected in the research concerning the Cold War twinning activities.

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