Download or read book Politicising the Communist Past written by Aleks Szczerbiak and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-01-31 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poland is a particularly interesting case of truth revelation and transitional justice in a post-communist country. This is because of the radical change of trajectory in its approach to dealing with the communist past, and the profound effect this had on Polish politics. The approach moved from 'communist-forgiving' in the early 1990s, to a mild law vetting individuals for their links with the communist-era security services at the end of the decade, through to a more radical vetting and opening up of the communist security service files in the mid-2000s. This book examines the detail of this changing approach. It explains why disagreements about transitional justice became so prominent, to the extent that they constituted one of the main causes of political divisions. It sets the Polish approach in the wider context of transitional justice and truth revelation, drawing out the lessons for newly emerging democracies, both in Eastern Europe and beyond.
Download or read book Investigation the Communist Past written by and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Communism and the Emergence of Democracy written by Harald Wydra and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-17 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before democracy becomes an institutionalized form of political authority, the rupture with authoritarian forms of power causes deep uncertainty about power and outcomes. This book connects the study of democratization in eastern Europe and Russia to the emergence and crisis of communism. Wydra argues that the communist past is not simply a legacy but needs to be seen as a social organism in gestation, where critical events produce new expectations, memories, and symbols that influence meanings of democracy. By examining a series of pivotal historical events, he shows that democratization is not just a matter of institutional design, but rather a matter of consciousness and leadership under conditions of extreme and traumatic incivility. Rather than adopting the opposition between non-democratic and democratic, Wydra argues that the communist experience must be central to the study of the emergence and nature of democracy in (post-) communist countries.
Download or read book Communism s Shadow written by Grigore Pop-Eleches and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has long been assumed that the historical legacy of Soviet Communism would have an important effect on post-communist states. However, prior research has focused primarily on the institutional legacy of communism. Communism's Shadow instead turns the focus to the individuals who inhabit post-communist countries, presenting a rigorous assessment of the legacy of communism on political attitudes. Post-communist citizens hold political, economic, and social opinions that consistently differ from individuals in other countries. Grigore Pop-Eleches and Joshua Tucker introduce two distinct frameworks to explain these differences, the first of which focuses on the effects of living in a post-communist country, and the second on living through communism. Drawing on large-scale research encompassing post-communist states and other countries around the globe, the authors demonstrate that living through communism has a clear, consistent influence on why citizens in post-communist countries are, on average, less supportive of democracy and markets and more supportive of state-provided social welfare. The longer citizens have lived through communism, especially as adults, the greater their support for beliefs associated with communist ideology—the one exception being opinions regarding gender equality. A thorough and nuanced examination of communist legacies' lasting influence on public opinion, Communism's Shadow highlights the ways in which political beliefs can outlast institutional regimes.
Download or read book Twenty Years After Communism written by Michael H. Bernhard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the fall of the Berlin Wall is positively commemorated in the West, the intervening years have shown that the former Soviet Bloc has a more complicated view of its legacy. In post-communist Eastern Europe, the way people remember state socialism is closely intertwined with the manner in which they envision historical justice. Twenty Years After Communism is concerned with the explosion of a politics of memory triggered by the fall of state socialism in Eastern Europe, and it takes a comparative look at the ways that communism and its demise have been commemorated (or not commemorated) by major political actors across the region. The book is built on three premises. The first is that political actors always strive to come to terms with the history of their communities in order to generate a sense of order in their personal and collective lives. Second, new leaders sometimes find it advantageous to mete out justice on the politicians of abolished regimes, and whether and how they do so depends heavily on their interpretation and assessment of the collective past. Finally, remembering the past, particularly collectively, is always a political process, thus the politics of memory and commemoration needs to be studied as an integral part of the establishment of new collective identities and new principles of political legitimacy. Each chapter takes a detailed look at the commemorative ceremony of a different country of the former Soviet Bloc. Collectively the book looks at patterns of extrication from state socialism, patterns of ethnic and class conflict, the strategies of communist successor parties, and the cultural traditions of a given country that influence the way official collective memory is constructed. Twenty Years After Communism develops a new analytical and explanatory framework that helps readers to understand the utility of historical memory as an important and understudied part of democratization.
Download or read book Politics without a Past written by Shari J. Cohen and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1999-11-22 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Politics without a Past Shari J. Cohen offers a powerful challenge to common characterizations of postcommunist politics as either a resurgence of aggressive nationalism or an evolution toward Western-style democracy. Cohen draws upon extensive field research to paint a picture of postcommunist political life in which ideological labels are meaningless and exchangeable at will, political parties appear and disappear regularly, and citizens remain unengaged in the political process. In contrast to the conventional wisdom, which locates the roots of widespread intranational strife in deeply rooted national identities from the past, Cohen argues that a profound ideological vacuum has fueled destructive tension throughout postcommunist Europe and the former Soviet Union. She uses Slovakia as a case study to reveal that communist regimes bequeathed an insidious form of historical amnesia to the majority of the political elite and the societies they govern. Slovakia was particularly vulnerable to communist intervention since its precommunist national consciousness was so weak and its only period of statehood prior to 1993 was as a Nazi puppet-state. To demonstrate her argument, Cohen focuses on Slovakia’s failure to forge a collective memory of the World War II experience. She shows how communist socialization prevented Slovaks from tying their individual family stories—of the Jewish deportations, of the anti-Nazi resistance, or of serving in the wartime government—to a larger historical narrative shared with others, leaving them bereft of historical or moral bearings. Politics without a Past develops an analytical framework that will be important for future research in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and beyond. Scholars in political science, history, East European and post-Soviet studies will find Cohen’s methodology and conclusions enlightening. For policymakers, diplomats, and journalists who deal with the region, she offers valuable insights into the elusive nature of postcommunist societies.
Download or read book Redeeming the Communist Past written by Anna M. Grzymala-Busse and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-02-18 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major study examines the regeneration of the former communist parties in East Central Europe after 1989.
Download or read book Memory Archipelago of the Communist Past written by Daniela Koleva and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-06-25 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at the memory of the communist past in Central and Eastern Europe, with a particular focus on Bulgaria: its “official” memory, constructed by institutions, its public memory, molded by media, rituals, books and films and the urban environment, and the everyday or ‘vernacular’ memory. It investigates how the recent past is remembered and the circumstances upon which this memory is conditioned - how is communism/socialism construed as a public recollection? Do these processes differ in the distinct post-communist countries? The book’s first part traces the institutional and political dimensions of coping with the communist past and the second part concentrates on personal reminiscences and vernacular memory. The book will be of interest for researchers and students in the fields of memory studies, Central and East European studies, oral history and contemporary history, as well as for specialists at institutions of memory and memory activists and organisations.
Download or read book Communism Science and the University written by Ivaĭlo Znepolski and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The book explores the intellectual history of Bulgaria between the 1960s and the 1980s at the intersections of the country's social and political history. Based on case studies, the research delves into three areas: the control and pressure mechanisms used on science and the university; the clash of ideas while performing the formal and hidden functions of academia in a communist regime setting; the processes whereby research and academia acquire a relative autonomy and alternative academic communities are being formed amidst the eroding ideological legitimacy of the regime. Centred on the concept of the 'incident', this setup allowed us to eschew the narratives around the role of the dissidents or 'freedom as a gift' and interpret society's transformation as the outcome of intersecting and overlaying sectoral events, which gathered strength down the years and lay the ground for the eruption labelled here as the 'Big Event of 1989'"--
Download or read book Political Will and Personal Belief written by Paul Hollander and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 signaled the demise of a political and economic system that was widely perceived as durable, the preeminent rival to that of the United States. Less conspicuous than the momentous political transformations were the altered beliefs, aspirations, and illusions of the individuals who had maintained and led that system. In this original interpretation the eminent sociologist Paul Hollander focuses on the human aspects of the failure of Soviet communism. He examines how members of the Soviet political elite, leaders in communist Czechoslovakia and Hungary, high-ranking officials in agencies of control and coercion, and distinguished defectors and exiles experienced the erosion of ideals that undermined the political system they had once believed in.Hollander analyzes an array of autobiographical and biographical writings, journalistic accounts, and scholarly interpretations of the unraveling of Soviet communism. The Soviet Union fell apart not merely because of severe economic shortcomings, Hollander argues, but because of the double impact of the conflict between official ideals and practical realities and an eroding sense of legitimacy in the highest echelons. In his conclusion, the author considers how Marxist theory both shaped and undermined the system.
Download or read book The Rise and Demise of World Communism written by George W. Breslauer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-04 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A concise, readable, and novel interpretation of the history of communist states. Sixteen states came to be ruled by communist parties during the 20th century. One, the Soviet Union, was geographically the largest nation in the world and a superpower. Another, China, had the world's largest population. At communism's high point, its adherents envisioned global triumph. Today, however, only five communist regimes remain in power. Why? In The Rise and Demise of World Communism, George Breslauer, a specialist who has spent decades observing the evolution of communist states, provides a sweeping history of the world communist movement, focusing in particular on what communist states shared in common and why they began to differ from each other over time. Throughout, Breslauer explores the relations among communist states as well as the relations between those states and the world of increasingly affluent, and militarily formidable, democratic-capitalist powers. He finds that these regimes all came to power in the context of warfare or its aftermath, followed by the consolidation of power by a revolutionary elite that valued "revolutionary violence" as the preferred means to an end, based upon Marx's vision of apocalyptic revolution and Lenin's conception of party organization. As Breslauer shows, all these regimes went on to "build socialism" according to a Stalinist template and were initially dedicated to "anti-imperialist struggle" as members of a world communist movement. But their common features gave way to diversity, difference, and defiance after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. For many reasons, and in many ways, those differences soon blew apart the world communist movement and eventually led to the collapse of European communism. Even though a few communist regimes still remain in power, the dream of world communism is dead. But the future of the remaining communist regimes is uncertain. An accessible history of one of the most important political phenomena of the past 150 years, The Rise and Demise of World Communism provides readers with a crisp account of the entire movement--from the theories of Marx and Lenin to the on-the-ground policies of Stalin, Mao, Gorbachev, Deng, and other communist leaders-that culminates in our own era.
Download or read book The Origin of the Communist Autocracy written by Leonard Schapiro and published by . This book was released on 2013-08 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Communist Political Systems written by Stephen White and published by Springer. This book was released on 1982-09-01 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third edition of this text provides a background to the politics of China, Eastern Europe and what was the Soviet Union. The book has been rewritten throughout to reflect the emergence of pluralist multi-party systems and non Communist governments are marked.
Download or read book Political Culture and Post Communism written by S. Whitefield and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-10-11 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our understanding of the dynamics of Communist systems was substantially improved by taking political culture into account. But how much does the concept of political culture add to our empirical understanding of post-Communist Russia? The book's contributors engage with theoretical debates between political culture and competing 'rational choice' and institutionalist approaches to post-Soviet politics, and provide illustrative empirical studies of civic participation, views of national identity, the Russian criminal justice system and political violence.
Download or read book Communism Science and the University written by Ivaylo Znepolski and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book explores the intellectual history of Bulgaria between the 1960s and the 1980s at the intersections of the country's social and political history. Based on case studies, the research delves into three areas: the control and pressure mechanisms used on science and the university; the clash of ideas while performing the formal and hidden functions of academia in a communist regime setting; the processes whereby research and academia acquire a relative autonomy and alternative academic communities are being formed amidst the eroding ideological legitimacy of the regime. Centred on the concept of the "incident", this setup allowed us to eschew the narratives around the role of the dissidents or "freedom as a gift" and interpret society's transformation as the outcome of intersecting and overlaying sectoral events, which gathered strength down the years and lay the ground for the eruption labelled here as the "Big Event of 1989".
Download or read book Political Culture and Political Change in Communist States written by Archie Brown and published by Springer. This book was released on 1979-10-01 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Handbook of Political Science Research on the USSR and Eastern Europe written by Ray Taras and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 1992-10-23 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This critical history of, and guide to, Soviet studies aims to take stock of the achievements and shortcomings in Western research on the region's politics and to serve as a "who's who" of Western Sovietologists, identifying many prominent political scientists from the former Communist states.
