Download or read book The Communist Quest for National Legitimacy in Europe 1918 1989 written by Martin Mevius and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are two popular myths concerning the relationship between communism and nationalism. The first is that nationalism and communism are wholly antagonistic and mutually exclusive. The second is the assertion that in communist Eastern Europe nationalism was oppressed before 1989, to emerge triumphant after the Berlin Wall came down. Reality was different. Certainly from 1945 onwards, communist parties presented themselves as heirs to national traditions and guardians of national interests. The communist states of Central and Eastern Europe constructed "socialist patriotism," a form of loyalty to their own state of workers and peasants. Up to 1989, communists in Eastern Europe sang the national anthem, and waved the national flag next to the red banner. The use of national images was not the exception, but the rule. From Cuba to Korea, all communist parties attempted to gain national legitimacy. This was not incidental or a deviation from Marxist orthodoxy, but ingrained in the theory and practice of the communist movement since its inception. The study of communist national legitimacy is an exciting new field. This book presents examples of communist attempts to co-opt nationalism from both sides of the iron curtain and lays bare the striking similarities between such diverse cases as the socialist patriotism of the Bulgarian Communist Party and the national line of the Portuguese communists, between Romanian communist nation building and the national ideology of the Spanish Communist Party. This book was published as a special issue of Nationalities Papers.

Download or read book An Ordinary Life written by Anna Müller and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-07 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One woman’s national, political, ethnic, social, and personal identities impart an extraordinary perspective on the histories of Europe, Polish Jews, Communism, activism, and survival during the twentieth century. Tonia Lechtman was a Jew, a loving mother and wife, a Polish patriot, a committed Communist, and a Holocaust survivor. Throughout her life these identities brought her to multiple countries—Poland, Palestine, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Israel—during some of the most pivotal and cataclysmic decades of the twentieth century. In most of those places, she lived on the margins of society while working to promote Communism and trying to create a safe space for her small children. Born in Łódź in 1918, Lechtman became fascinated with Communism in her early youth. In 1935, to avoid the consequences of her political activism during an increasingly antisemitic and hostile political environment, the family moved to Palestine, where Tonia met her future husband, Sioma. In 1937, the couple traveled to Spain to participate in the Spanish Civil War. After discovering she was pregnant, Lechtman relocated to France while Sioma joined the International Brigades. She spent the Second World War in Europe, traveling with two small children between France, Germany, and Switzerland, at times only miraculously avoiding arrest and being transported east to Nazi camps. After the war, she returned to Poland, where she planned to (re)build Communist Poland. However, soon after her arrival she was imprisoned for six years. In 1971, under pressure from her children, Lechtman emigrated from Poland to Israel, where she died in 1996. In writing Lechtman’s biography, Anna Müller has consulted a rich collection of primary source material, including archival documentation, private documents and photographs, interviews from different periods of Lechtman’s life, and personal correspondence. Despite this intimacy, Müller also acknowledges key historiographical questions arising from the lacunae of lost materials, the selective preservation of others, and her own interpretive work translating a life into a life story.

Download or read book Scots and the Spanish Civil War written by Fraser Raeburn and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-25 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on newly-declassified government documents and international archives in Spain and beyond, this book explores the many ways in which Scots responded to the Spanish Civil War (1936-9).

Download or read book The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Spanish Civil War written by Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-11-30 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 25 innovative thematic essays, The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Spanish Civil War sees an interdisciplinary team of scholars examine a conflict that, more than 80 years after its conclusion, continues to generate both scholarly and public controversy. Split into four main sections covering Military and Diplomatic Issues, Society and Culture, Politics, and Debates, the volume offers a number of unique features. It is unprecedented in its comprehensiveness and includes chapters on topics that are rarely, if ever, explored in the literature of the field: humanitarianism, children and families, material conditions, the decimation of elites, archives and sources, archaeological approaches, digital approaches, public history, and cultural studies approaches. Instead of discussing each of the two warring sides, Republicans and Francoists, separately, as is so often the case, the book's thematic structure means that these opposing forces are examined together, facilitating comparison and fresh understanding in numerous areas of study. Contributors from the UK, the USA, Canada, Spain and Denmark also analyse the major controversies and disputes surrounding each topic as part of a detailed exploration of one of the seminal events of the 20th century.

Download or read book Jewish Volunteers the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War written by Gerben Zaagsma and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-04-06 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War discusses the participation of volunteers of Jewish descent in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, focusing particularly on the establishment of the Naftali Botwin Company, a Jewish military unit that was created in the Polish Dombrowski Brigade. Gerben Zaagsma analyses the symbolic meaning of the participation of Jewish volunteers and the Botwin Company both during and after the civil war. He puts this participation in the broader context of Jewish involvement in the left and Jewish/non-Jewish relations in the communist movement and beyond. To this end, the book examines representations of Jewish volunteers in the Parisian Yiddish press (both communist and non-communist). In addition, it analyses the various ways in which Jewish volunteers and the Botwin Company have been commemorated after WWII, tracing how discourses about Jewish volunteers became decisively shaped by post-Holocaust debates on Jewish responses to fascism and Nazism, and discusses claims that Jewish volunteers can be seen as 'the first Jews to resist Hitler with arms'.

Download or read book Conspiracy and the Spanish Civil War written by Herbert R. Southworth and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-03-11 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by one of the most celebrated historians of the Spanish Civil War, this book presents a fascinating account of the origins of the war and the nature and importance of conspiracy for the extreme right. Based on exhaustive research, and written with lucidity and considerable humour, it acts as both an outstanding introduction to the vast literature of the war, and a monumental contribution to that literature.

Download or read book Stalin s Agent written by Boris Volodarsky and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 832 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the true story behind General Alexander Orlov, the man who never was, now revealed in full for the first time: Stalinist henchman, Soviet spy, celebrated defector to the West, and central character in the greatest KGB deception ever.

Download or read book The International Brigades written by Giles Tremlett and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 721 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ** Shortlisted for the Military History Matters Book of the Year Award ** 'Magnificent. Narrative history at its vivid and compelling best' Fergal Keane The first major history of the International Brigades: a tale of blood, ideals and tragedy in the fight against fascism. The Spanish Civil War was the first armed battle in the fight against fascism, and a rallying cry for a generation. Over 35,000 volunteers from sixty-one countries around the world came to defend democracy against the troops of Franco, Hitler and Mussolini. Ill-equipped and disorderly, yet fuelled by a shared sense of purpose and potential glory, these disparate groups of idealistic young men and women formed a volunteer army of a size and type unseen since the Crusades, known as the International Brigades. Were they heroes or fools? Saints or bloodthirsty adventurers? And what exactly did they achieve? In this magisterial history, Giles Tremlett tells – for the first time – the story of the Spanish Civil War through the experiences of this remarkable group. Drawing on the Brigades' archives in Moscow, as well as first-hand accounts, The International Brigades captures all the human drama of a historic mission to halt fascist expansion in Europe.

Download or read book Travellers of the World Revolution written by Brigitte Studer and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2023-06-20 with total page 659 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Communist International was the first organised attempt to bring about worldwide revolution and left a lasting mark on 20th-century history. The book offers a new and fascinating account of this transnational organisation founded in 1919 by Lenin and Trotsky and dissolved by Stalin in 1943, telling the story through the eyes of the activists who became its "professional revolutionaries". Studer follows such figures as Willi Mnzenberg, Mikhail Borodin, M.N. Roy and Evelyn Trent, Tina Modotti, Agnes Smedley and many others less well-known as they are despatched to the successive political hotspots of the 1920s and '30s, from revolutionary Berlin to Baku, from Shanghai to Spain, from Nazi Germany to Stalin's Moscow. It traces their journeys from revolutionary hope to accommodation, defeat or death, looking at questions of motivation and commitment, agency and negotiation, of life and love, conflict and frustration. In doing so, it reveals a forgotten Comintern, the expression of a multi-dimensional revolutionary moment, which attracted not only working-class but feminist, anti-racist, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist activists, highlighting the role of women in the Comintern and the centrality of anti-colonialism to the Communist project. The book concludes with a reflection on the ultimate demise of a historically unique undertaking.

Download or read book Stasi written by John Christian Schmeidel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-09-12 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a fascinating new examination of one of the most feared and efficient secret services the world has ever known, the Stasi. The East German Stasi was a jewel among the communist secret services, the most trusted by its Russian mother organization the KGB, and even more efficient. In its attempt at ‘total coverage’ of civil society, the Ministry for State Security came close to realizing the totalitarian ideal of a political police force. Based on research in archival files unlocked just after the fall of the Berlin Wall and available to few German and Western readers, this volume details the Communist Party’s attempt to control all aspects of East German civil society, and sets out what is known of the regime’s support for international terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s. STASI will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, German politics and international relations.

Download or read book Antifascism After Hitler written by Catherine Plum and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-02-20 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Antifascism After Hitler investigates the antifascist stories, memory sites and youth reception that were critical to the success of political education in East German schools and extracurricular activities. As the German Democratic Republic (GDR) promoted national identity and socialist consciousness, two of the most potent historical narratives to permeate youth education became tales of communist resistors who fought against fascism and the heroic deeds of the Red Army in World War II. These stories and iconic images illustrate the message that was presented to school-age children and adolescents in stages as they advanced through school and participated in the official communist youth organizations and other activities. This text delivers the first comprehensive study of youth antifascism in the GDR, extending scholarship beyond the level of the state to consider the everyday contributions of local institutions and youth mentors responsible for conveying stories and commemorative practices to generations born during WWII and after the defeat of fascism. While the government sought to use educators and former resistance fighters as ideological shock troops, it could not completely dictate how these stories would be told, with memory intermediaries altering at times the narrative and message. Using a variety of primary sources including oral history interviews, the author also assesses how students viewed antifascism, with reactions ranging from strong identification to indifference and dissent. Antifascist education and commemoration were never simply state-prescribed and were not as "participation-less" as some scholars and contemporary observers claim, even as educators fought a losing battle to maintain enthusiasm.

Download or read book An Early Self written by Susanne Zepp and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-19 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What role has Jewish intellectual culture played in the development of modern Romance literature? Susanne Zepp seeks to answer this question through an examination of five influential early modern texts written between 1499 and 1627: Fernando de Rojas's La Celestina, Leone Ebreo's Dialoghi d'amore, the anonymous tale Lazarillo de Tormes (the first picaresque novel), Montaigne's Essais, and the poetical renditions of the Bible by João Pinto Delgado. Forced to straddle two cultures and religions, these Iberian conversos (Jews who converted to Catholicism) prefigured the subjectivity which would come to characterize modernity. As "New Christians" in an intolerant world, these thinkers worked within the tensions of their historical context to question norms and dogmas. In the past, scholars have focused on the Jewish origins of such major figures in literature and philosophy. Through close readings of these texts, Zepp moves the debate away from the narrow question of the authors' origins to focus on the innovative ways these authors subverted and transcended traditional genres. She interprets the changes that took place in various literary genres and works of the period within the broader historical context of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, demonstrating the extent to which the development of early modern subjective consciousness and its expression in literary works can be explained in part as a universalization of originally Jewish experiences.

Download or read book Crescent Remembered written by Patricia Hertel and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-26 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary Spain and Portugal share a historical experience as Iberian states which emerged within the context of al-Andalus. These centuries of Muslim presence in the Middle Ages became a contested heritage during the process of modern nation-building with its varied concepts and constructs of national identities. Politicians, historians and intellectuals debated vigorously the question how the Muslim past could be reconciled with the idea of the Catholic nation. The Crescent Remembered investigates the processes of exclusion and integration of the Islamic past within the national narratives. It analyses discourses of historiography, Arabic studies, mythology, popular culture and colonial policies towards Muslim populations from the 19th century to the dictatorships of Franco and Salazar in the 20th century. In particular, it explores why, despite apparent historical similarities, in Spain and Portugal entirely different strategies and discourses concerning the Islamic past emerged. In the process, it seeks to shed light on the role of the Iberian Peninsula as a crucial European historical "contact zone" with Islam.

Download or read book Changing Times Germany in 20 Th Century Europe Les Temps Qui Changent L Allemagne Dans L Europe Du 20 E Si cle written by Jürgen Elvert and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2008 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proceedings of the doctoral summer seminar, «Changing times. Germany in 20th-Century Europe: Continuity, Evolution and Breakdowns», organised by the European Academy of Yuste Foundation in cooperation with the SEGEI network, in the Royal Monastery of Yuste and Palace of Charles V (10th-15th September 2007). Actes du séminaire doctoral d'été, « Les temps qui changent. L'Allemagne dans l'Europe du 20e siècle: Continuité, évolution et rupture », organisé par la Fondation Académie Européenne de Yuste et le réseau SEGEI dans le Monastère Royal de Yuste et le Palais de Charles Quint (du 10 au 15 septembre 2007).

Download or read book Faschismus und Europ ische Literatur written by Stein Ugelvik Larsen and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Padua and Venice written by Brigit Blass-Simmen and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-11-20 with total page 651 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Venice and Padua are neighboring cities with a topographical and geopolitical distinction. Venice is a port city in the Venetian Lagoon, which opened up towards Byzantium and the East. Padua on the mainland was founded in Roman times and is a university city, a place of Humanism and research into antiquity. The contributions analyze works of art as aesthetic formulations of their places of origin, which however also have an effect on and expand their surroundings. International experts investigate how these two different concepts stimulated each other in the Early Modern Age, and how the exchange worked.

Download or read book Globalisation Cultures Religions Globalisierung Kulturen Religionen written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The process of Globalisation has subjected cultures, religions and societies or communities of the world to fundamental changes, which are primarily characterised and conditioned by new communication technologies, migration, worldwide exchange of goods and capital. This development has led to the rise of plural societies, which not only mean chances and opportunities but also a potential of threat for the future of humanity. Subsequent to this development this international conference addresses the question of how living together in a global age could succeed and be fruitful. Im Zuge des Globalisierungsprozesses befinden sich alle Kulturen, Religionen und damit alle Gesellschaften der Welt in einem grundlegenden Wandel, der vor allem durch neue Kommunikationstechnologien, Migration, weltweiten Austausch von Kapital und Gütern bedingt ist. Diese Entwicklung hat zur Entstehung pluraler Gesellschaften geführt, die nicht nur eine Chance, sondern auch ein Bedrohungspotenzial für die Zukunft der Menschheit bedeutet. Vor diesem Hintergrund stellt sich für die Tagung die Frage, wie ein Zusammenleben der Menschen in einer zunehmend multireligiösen und multikulturellen Welt gelingen kann