Mikuláš Pešta, "Student Internationalism and the Global Cold War: The International Union of Students in Socialist Prague" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

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**Mikuláš Pešta** (1:13)
Welcome to The New Books Network.

**Unknown** (1:23)
Hello and welcome to this episode of the CEU Review of Books Podcast. Today I'm here with Mikuláš Pešta to talk about his new book, Student Internationalism and the Global Cold War, The International Union of Students in Socialist Prague. The book was published by Bloomsbury and it is available open access. You can find the link in the show notes to this episode. Mikuláš is an assistant professor at the Institute of World History at Charles University in Prague. His research focuses on the history of internationalism, student movements, East-South relations and political violence in the Cold War.
Welcome to the podcast.

**Mikuláš Pešta** (1:57)
Thank you for having me.

**Unknown** (1:59)
Before we discuss your book, Student Internationalism and the Global Cold War, could you briefly tell our listeners about yourself and your academic background?

**Mikuláš Pešta** (2:07)
Yes. This book that we are going to discuss, it is an output of Swiss-Czech grant that we had. I realized it on the Institute of Contemporary History at the Czech Academy of Science and it finished this December. And besides that, I also teach at the Faculty of Art of the Charles University in Prague. And as you said, I'm doing research on internationalism in the Global Cold War, the history of international organizations, protest movements, but also bilateral relations between Czechoslovakia and countries of the Global South. In general, the role of Czechoslovakia in the global history, that's what I'm trying to focus on right now.

**Unknown** (2:51)
For listeners who haven't yet read the book, what is the central argument of Student Internationalism and the Global Cold War?

**Mikuláš Pešta** (2:57)
Well, in the book, I'm trying to look at student internationalism in the Cold War, in the post-war world, but also in the longer perspective. So, and mainly on the International Union of Students, which was a student federation, International Student Federation, like a federation of national unions of students, which at first aimed to be a universal structure that would transcend ideological differences. But quite soon after the Second World War, it became obvious that it would be on the eastern side of the Cold War. Like it became a pro-Soviet organization. One of my aims was to show not the International Union of Students as a Soviet stooge or only a Soviet or communist front organization, but as a network that was composed of a variety of actors, of member organizations, affiliated state and non-state actors that were involved in its activities, in its agenda, and that formed the network.
Yes, on some level, we can see the IUS as a very pro-Soviet organization, but on the other hand, we can see all these nuances that stretched to the whole world. That was one of the aims of the book. I also wanted to show Prague as an important hub, as a node in this network. Prague hosted not only the International Union of Students, but also the World Federation of Trade Unions, International Organization of Journalists, briefly also the World Peace Council and other international structures. So a part of this argument is also that Prague was somewhat important in these socialist-oriented non-governmental networks. And also, I'm trying to show the evolution of student internationalism in general. So how students as a social group evolved, the organization of students as a social group evolved after the Second World War, how it was affected by processes such as decolonization, but also a massification of tertiary education, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, how the organization of student movement was affected by the protest movement that was particularly strong among students. So how did the world of organized students look after the Second World War and how it looked at the end of the Cold War? That's the process that I follow.