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

Defectors from the Communist world to the West during the Cold War were a significant topic of interest. Their stories were often sensationalized and their journeys were fraught with danger. Upon reaching the West, they were entitled to special benefits, but they were also pursued by the states they left. This book explores the global struggle over defectors and how their unauthorized flight shaped the governance of global borders. It reveals how the competition for defectors led to collusion between the superpowers and how defection's ideological framework hardened borders. Although defection all but disappeared after the Cold War, its legacy and limitations remain with us today.

Format: Hardback
Length: 336 pages
Publication date: 25 October 2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc

Defectors from the Communist world to the West during the Cold War were a significant phenomenon that captured the world's attention. Their stories were often sensationalized in the media, with spy novels and films dramatizing their journeys. Upon reaching the West, defectors were entitled to special benefits, including financial assistance and permanent residency. However, their unauthorized flight across borders was not without risks, as they were pursued by the states they left and eagerly sought by the United States and its allies.

Defectors follows the treacherous journeys of defectors who sought to transcend the limitations of the Cold War world. The film explores how their unauthorized flight via land, sea, and air shaped a globalized world. It charts a global struggle over defectors that unfolded among rival intelligence agencies operating in the shadows of 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 the film 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 sheds light on the complex dynamics of the Cold War era and its impact on the world today. It reminds us of the human cost of political conflict and the importance of seeking asylum and protecting the rights of migrants.

Weight: 590g
Dimension: 166 x 244 x 31 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780197546871