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  • Defectors: How the Illicit Flight of Soviet Citizens Built the Borders of the Cold War World

    Defectors by Scott, Erik R.;

    How the Illicit Flight of Soviet Citizens Built the Borders of the Cold War World

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      • Publisher's listprice GBP 27.99
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        13 372 Ft (12 735 Ft + 5% VAT)
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    13 372 Ft

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    Availability

    Estimated delivery time: Expected time of arrival: end of January 2026.
    Not in stock at Prospero.

    Why don't you give exact delivery time?

    Delivery time is estimated on our previous experiences. We give estimations only, because we order from outside Hungary, and the delivery time mainly depends on how quickly the publisher supplies the book. Faster or slower deliveries both happen, but we do our best to supply as quickly as possible.

    Product details:

    • Publisher OUP USA
    • Date of Publication 25 October 2023

    • ISBN 9780197546871
    • Binding Hardback
    • No. of pages328 pages
    • Size 236x165x30 mm
    • Weight 594 g
    • Language English
    • Illustrations 7 black and white illustrations
    • 506

    Categories

    Short description:

    Focusing on the borders of the Cold War, Defectors examines how the superpowers competed over those who took unauthorized flight from behind the Iron Curtain and how this movement of people in camps, border zones, around embassies, in international waters, and in the air helped create the current refugee system.

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    Long description:

    A broad-ranging history of defectors from the Communist world to the West and how their Cold War treatment shaped present-day restrictions on cross-border movement.

    Defectors fleeing the Soviet Union seized the world's attention during the Cold War. Their stories were given sensational news coverage and dramatized in spy novels and films. Upon reaching the West, they were entitled to special benefits, including financial assistance and permanent residency. In contrast to other migrants, defectors were pursued by the states they left even as they were eagerly sought by the United States and its allies. Taking part in a risky game that played out across the globe, defectors sought to transcend the limitations of the Cold War world.

    Defectors follows their treacherous journeys and looks at how their unauthorized flight via land, sea, and air gave shape to a globalized world. It charts a global struggle over defectors that unfolded among rival intelligence agencies operating in the shadows of an occupied Europe, in the forbidden border zones of the USSR, in the disputed straits of the South China Sea, on a hijacked plane 10,000 feet in the air, and around the walls of Soviet embassies. What it reveals is a Cold War world whose borders were far less stable than the notion of an "Iron Curtain" suggests. Surprisingly, the competition for defectors paved the way for collusion between the superpowers, who found common cause in regulating the spaces through which defectors moved. Disputes over defectors mapped out the contours of modern state sovereignty, and defection's ideological framework hardened borders by reinforcing the view that asylum should only be granted to migrants with clear political claims.

    Although defection all but disappeared after the Cold War, this innovative work shows how it shaped the governance of global borders and helped forge an international refugee system whose legacy and limitations remain with us to this day.

    A nuanced look at deep complications underneath stories of asylum seekers in their journey 'from tyranny to liberty'.

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    Table of Contents:

    Acknowledgments
    Introduction: Defectors and the Spaces in Between
    Part I: Building Borders
    Chapter 1: From Displacement to Defection
    Chapter 2: Between Intelligence and Counterintelligence
    Chapter 3: Socialist Borders in a Global Age
    Part II: Governing Global Mobility
    Chapter 4: Soviets Abroad
    Chapter 5: International Waters
    Chapter 6: Cold War Airspaces
    Conclusion: After Defection
    Notes
    Sources and Select Bibliography
    Index

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