Registration REQUIRED by 4pm on April 23, 2025 in order to attend this event.
Please join the Harriman Institute for a talk by Louis Porter on his book “Reds in Blue: UNESCO, World Governance, and the Soviet Internationalist Imagination,” winner of the 2024 Marshall D. Shulman Book Prize. Moderated by Yana Skorobogatov.
“Reds in Blue” investigates Soviet relations with 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, the book examines the forgotten stories of Soviet citizens who contributed to the nuts-and-bolts operations 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. His research explores the Soviet Union’s role in the world, particularly during the post-1945 period. He is the author of “Reds in Blue: UNESCO, World Governance, and the Soviet Internationalist Imagination” (Oxford University Press, 2023). His work has also been published in The Russian Review and Slavic Review.
