Located right on the fault line of two competing ideological and military alliances of the Cold War, and permeated by national, cultural, and religious diversity, the Balkans region is particularly suitable for the study of the Cold War.

The book explores, on the one hand, the roots, evolution, and impact of the Cold War itself in the Balkans, and on the other hand, the specific weight of local conditions and pressures. Sixteen historians, political scientists, and international relations professors study a series of complex topics that rarely coexist in a concise edition: the Balkans and the creation of the world order during the Cold War; military alliances in the Balkans; the uneasy relations of Balkan states with the superpowers; the dilemmas of the region in the 1970s and 1980s and the relationship with the EEC; issues of identity, culture, and ideology. This is a groundbreaking contribution to the literature of the Cold War, as the authors rely on extensive archival research, both in local and American, former Soviet, and Western European archives.