When I first developed my project, I approached the Cold War through a fairly familiar question: how rigid was the Iron Curtain? I was interested in whether cultural exchange, specifically Soviet ballet tours, revealed cracks in what is often portrayed as a highly divided world.
However, as I began reading more widely, particularly in transnational history, I realised that this question, although interesting, was too broad and somewhat descriptive. It focused on outcomes rather than processes and more importantly, it did not fully reflect the methodological approaches I had explored in my earlier work.
Through engaging with historians such as Patricia Clavin, Pierre-Yves Saunier and Akira Iriye, I began to rethink my project. Instead of asking whether the Iron Curtain was rigid, I shifted my focus to how cultural exchange actually operated across it. This led me to a more specific and, I think, more analytical question: who shaped the meaning of Soviet ballet tours?
This shift also helped me connect my project more clearly to broader historiography. Historians such as Małgorzata Fidelis have already shown that the Cold War was not as rigid as it is often assumed to be. Similarly, Antje Dietze and Katja Naumann emphasise the importance of transnational actors and spatial interaction. Instead of just repeating these arguments, my project now aims to show how such interaction worked in practice, using ballet tours as a case study.
One of the most interesting aspects of this process has been realising that cultural diplomacy was not something that was only imposed by the Soviet state. While historians such as Christina Ezrahi and Cadra Peterson McDaniel convincingly demonstrate that ballet was used as a tool of ideological projection, the actual impact of these tours was far less controllable. Audience reactions, press coverage, and even incidents such as the Nina Pomeranova case suggest that meaning was shaped through interaction between multiple actors.
This realisation has been both exciting and challenging. One of the main difficulties I have encountered is moving from a state-centred perspective to a genuinely transnational one. It is easy to identify Soviet intentions, but I suppose it is much harder to trace how audiences, performers and institutions interacted to produce meaning. This has required me to think more carefully about sources, particularly those that capture reception, such as newspaper reviews and memoirs.
If I were to start this project again, I would begin with a clearer methodological focus. Initially, I treated transnational history more as a background framework rather than something that should actively shape my research questions. Only later did I realise that it needed to be my central approach.
Overall, this process has shown me that research is not linear and refining a question is an essential part of developing a stronger and more focused argument. In my case, moving from the idea of a rigid Iron Curtain to a focus on interaction and agency has allowed me to engage more critically with both my sources and the broader historiography.