The Robert Menzies Institute is proud to host Professor Mark Edele for a talk exploring early Cold War migration and its impact on Australia. In the aftermath of the Second World War and as the Iron Curtain fell down on Eastern Europe, many people migrated to Australia in search of a new life. Eastern European migrants changed the face of Australia and importantly White Australia. Their presence became a tangible expression of Australia’s Cold War fears.

Mark Edele is the inaugural Hansen Professor in History at the University of Melbourne where he also serves as Deputy Dean in the Faculty of Arts. He is a historian of the Soviet Union and its successor states, in particular Russia. He was trained as a historian at the Universities of Erlangen, Tübingen, Moscow and Chicago. His latest book, entitled Stalinism at War. The Soviet Union in World War II, was published in 2021. He teaches the histories of the Soviet Union, of the Second World War, and of dictatorship and democracy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.