ABSTRACT
The more the Cold War fades into the distance, the more we shall be obliged to think of it, re-read it and reinterpret it not only geopolitically but also in cultural terms. We shall discover-doubtless risking over-rationalization of the pasthow original this moment in history was in the way it was able, over an exceptionally long period, to reorder the main world issues around a battle for the appropriation of meaning. Within half a century the Cold War managed to ‘encompass’ very large-scale political, economic, social and cultural transformations: the decolonization of the Third World, the growth in economic power of Japan and Germany, the Sino-Soviet split, and the proliferation of bloody regional conflicts. It also managed to incorporate economic and sociological realities as fundamental as the decline of the industrialization strategy to the advantage of the service sector, the erosion of the Keynesian model, the blossoming of individualist values, the development of mass culture and the subsequent atomization of demands.1
