sznie / 36490coldwar

36490coldwar

In the suspicions-fueled environment of the Cold War, social connections mattered greatly and affected how individuals formed political opinions and commitments in the anti-communist opposition. Based on 114 documents, we analyzed the social network of Eastern European political refugees who fled the Soviet Bloc and Western high-level politicians (117 individuals in total), to understand the connections and influence among nations, agencies, and individuals. We addressed two research questions: 1) Who were the central figures involved in the Cold War refugee conflict at the time?, and 2) What communities can we discover in the network of political activists in Romania/Eastern Europe during the Cold War? We analyzed the network using a stochastic block model and exponential family random graph models to study central nodes, clusters, and the effects of individual characteristics on connectivity. Based on our results, we have identified the central figures and the communities they belong to.