Everyday World Governance: Soviet Citizens and International Organizations During the Cold War

Reds in Blue investigates Soviet relations with one of the most prominent international organizations, UNESCO, to present a novel way of thinking about the role of the United Nations in the Soviet experience of the Cold War. Drawing on unused archival material from the former USSR and elsewhere, the book examines the forgotten stories of Soviet citizens who contributed to the nuts-and-bolts operations and lesser-known activities of world governance. These unexamined dimensions of everyday participation in the UN’s bureaucracy, conferences, publications, and technical assistance show the body’s importance for a group of Soviet “one-worlders,” who used the UN to imagine and work for a better world amidst the realities of the Cold War.

Louis Howard Porter is an assistant professor of History at Texas State University. He received his PhD from UNC-Chapel Hill. His book, Reds in Blue: UNESCO, World Governance, and the Soviet Internationalist Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2023), is the first archives-based history of the Soviet reception of the idea of world governance through international organization. Dr. Porter’s writings have also appeared in The Russian Review and The Slavic Review. Currently, he is launching research for a global, postmodern biography of Andrei Gromyko (1909-1989), who served as the top Soviet diplomat and face of the socialist country on the world stage for much of the Cold War.