Comparativ is a paper-based scientific journal, which is published six times a year; each issue contains 4-6 thematically related articles, a forum section, and book reviews. It is edited by Matthias Middell and Hannes Siegrist (both from the University of Leipzig), and who are assisted by an editorial board (the current members are listed at: www.comparativ.net).

history.transnationalistory is an electronic journal within the framework of H-Soz-u-Kult and history Clio-Online. It was founded in 2004 by French and German scholars from the Centre for Advanced Study at the University of Leipzig and from the 'Transfers culturels' research group at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Paris. Now it is supported and supervised by ENIUGH and reviewed by its Steering Committee. Since its founding it has published more than 200 book reviews, as many as 60 reports on conferences and workshops, and another 50 announcements of initiatives and projects. These numbers, along with its more than 1800 subscribers, indicate that the forum has become, during the past two years, an effective instrument of communication within the multilingual European community of historians (and scholars of other disciplines) who are interested and engaged in transnational, world, and global history.

In post-World War II European history, the years 1945, 1968, and 1989 have been labelled the three transformative moments. In a larger perspective - and this is the hypothesis of the volume - the year 1956 was a marker of global change. Just past the mid point of the twentieth century, this was not only the year of Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin, the Polish and Hungarian revolutions, and the Sinai and Suez invasions and retreats. In the global history of the Cold War, 1956 was one of the most violent of years, when the Super Power rivalry - ideological, political, geopolitical, and military - affected every aspect of human life on the planet. On the other hand, in that tumultuous year global movements and a global consciousness were developing. Even the most powerful nation-states, once the ultimate sources of power, wealth, and authority, faced a world of increasingly porous frontiers, which goods, people, and ideas - as well as the looming nuclear cloud - could now penetrate.