Download or read book Reflections on 1989 in Eastern Europe written by Terry Cox and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a selection of recent research on the events and developments of 1989 in Eastern Europe. It offers a mix of detailed examinations of the events of 1989 in Eastern Europe, thoughtful and considered appraisals of developments, and ‘middle-range’ theoretical discussions of patterns of cause and effect. The authors range in their approaches from detailed examinations of government and ruling-party papers from the archives, some of it originally labelled top secret, to personal observations and oral history based on interviews with participants, to analysis of survey data and official statistics. In their chosen focus the essays range from explorations of the emerging crisis in the communist regimes that led to the events of 1989, reflections and insights into the events and changing mood during 1989 itself, and examinations of some of the consequences and legacies of 1989. This book was published as a special issue of Europe-Asia Studies.

Download or read book Between Past and Future written by Sorin Antohi and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The list of contributors is impressive withnot a single dull chapter...; the editors are to be congratulated for making available such a stimulating and timely, if not timeless, collection" - Slavic Review "[T]his is a book that will serve many intellectual tastes and interests, and that will certainly prove thought provoking for anyone who reads it... I recommend it to anybody who wants to witness the analythical depth and span with which the meaning of 1989 can be approached." - Extremism & Democracy The tenth anniversary of the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe provides the starting point for this thought-provoking analysis. Between Past and Future reflects upon the past ten years and considers what lies ahead for the future. An international group of distinguished academics and public intellectuals, including former dissidents and active politicians, engage in a lively exchange on the antecedents, causes, contexts, meanings and legacies of the 1989 revolutions. At a crossroads between past and future, the contributors to this seminal volume address all the crucial issues -- liberal democracy and its enemies, modernity and discontent, economic reforms and their social impact, ethnicity, nationalism and religion, geopolitics, electoral systems and political power, European integration and the tragic demise of Yugoslavia. Based on the results of recent research on the ideologies behind one of the most dramatic systematic transformations in world history, and including contributions from some of the world's leading experts, Between Past and Future is an essential reference book for scholars and students of all levels, policy-makers, journalists and the general reader interested in the past and future prospects of Central & Eastern Europe

Download or read book 1989 written by James Mark and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-29 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Placing Eastern Europe in a global context, this provides new perspectives on the political, economic, and cultural transformations of the late twentieth century.

Download or read book Reassessing Communism written by Katarzyna Chmielewska and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-30 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thirteen authors of this collective work undertook to articulate matter-of-fact critiques of the dominant narrative about communism in Poland while offering new analyses of the concept, and also examining the manifestations of anticommunism. Approaching communist ideas and practices, programs and their implementations, as an inseparable whole, they examine the issues of emancipation, upward social mobility, and changes in the cultural canon. The authors refuse to treat communism in Poland in simplistic categories of totalitarianism, absolute evil and Soviet colonization, and similarly refuse to equate communism and fascism. Nor do they adopt the neoliberal view of communism as a project doomed to failure. While wholly exempt from nostalgia, these essays show that beyond oppression and bad governance, communism was also a regime in which people pursued a variety of goals and sincerely attempted to build a better world for themselves. The book is interdisciplinary and applies the tools of social history, intellectual history, political philosophy, anthropology, literature, cultural studies, and gender studies to provide a nuanced view of the communist regimes in east-central Europe.

Download or read book Stalinism Revisited written by Vladimir Tismaneanu and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2009-11-10 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deals with the period of takeover and of 'high Stalinism' in Eastern Europe (1945–1955). These years are considered to be fundamentally characterized by institutional and ideological transfers based upon the premise of radical transformism and of cultural revolution. Both a balance-sheet and a politico-historical synthesis that reflects the archival and thematic novelties which came about in the field of communism studies after 1989.

Download or read book 1989 as a Political World Event written by Jacques Rupnik and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-24 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is not about the events of 1989, but about 1989 as a world event. Starting with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet bloc it examines the historical significance and the world brought about by 1989. When the Cold War ended in Europe it ushered in a world in which the international agenda is set outside Europe, in America or Asia. The book critically examines and moves beyond some of the conveniently simple paradigms proposed in the nineties, by leading political scientists such as Fukuyama and Huntington, to show how the events of 1989 meant different things to different parties. This was an anti-utopian revolution, a symbol of the possibility of non-violent transitions to democracy, which raised the hopes of world-wide democratic changes. Contributors show how 1989 can be seen as the founding moment of a globalized world, but equal attention should be given to the dispersion of its meanings and the exhaustion of some of its main trends associated with the post-1989 era. Europe was reunited, yet it is in crisis. Twenty years on, global markets have brought about a global financial crisis. The fall of the Berlin Wall was celebrated as the advent of free movement in a world without borders. Now however, we can see that new borders, walls, fences have since been built. With an introductory essay by Vaclav Havel, 1989 as a Political World Event will be of interest to scholars of European Politics and International Relations.

Download or read book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe written by Ralf Dahrendorf and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-29 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 effectively ended the division of Europe into East and West, and the features of our world that have resulted bear little resemblance to those of the forty years that preceded the Wall's fall. The rise of a new Europe prompts many questions, most of which remain to be answered. What does it all mean? Where is it going to lead? Are we witnessing the conclusion of an era without seeing anything to replace an old and admittedly dismal way of life? What will a market economy do to the social texture of various countries of Central Europe? Will it not make some rich while many will become poorer than ever? How can the rule of law be brought about?In this incisive and lucid book, Ralf Dahrendorf, one of Europe's most distinguished scholars, ponders these and other equally vexing questions. He regards what has happened in East Central Europe as a victory for neither of the social systems that once opposed each other across the Iron Curtain. Rather, he views these events as a vote for an open society over a closed society. The continuing conundrum, he argues, which will plague peoples everywhere, will be how to balance the need for economic growth with the desire for social justice while building authentic and enduring democratic institutions.Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, which includes a new introduction from the author, is a humane, skeptical, and anti-utopian work, a manifesto for a radical liberalism in which the social entitlements of citizenship are as important a condition of progress as the opportunities for choice. A fascinating study of change and geopolitics in the modern world, Reflections points the way towards a new politics for the twenty-first century. Ralf Dahrendorf, born in Hamburg, Germany in 1929, is a member of Britain's House of Lords. He was professor of sociology at Hamburg, Tobingen and Konstanz from 1957 to 1968, and in 1974 moved to Britain. He has been the director

Download or read book Labor in State Socialist Europe 1945 1989 written by Marsha Siefert and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Labor regimes under communism in East-Central Europe were complex, shifting, and ambiguous. This collection of sixteen essays offers new conceptual and empirical ways to understand their history from the end of World War II to 1989, and to think about how their experiences relate to debates about labor history, both European and global. The authors reconsider the history of state socialism by re-examining the policies and problems of communist regimes and recovering the voices of the workers who built them. The contributors look at work and workers in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia. They explore the often contentious relationship between politics and labor policy, dealing with diverse topics including workers’ safety and risks; labor rights and protests; working women’s politics and professions; migrant workers and social welfare; attempts to control workers’ behavior and stem unemployment; and cases of incomplete, compromised, or even abandoned processes of proletarianization. Workers are presented as active agents in resisting and supporting changes in labor policies, in choosing allegiances, and in defining the very nature of work.

Download or read book Our Man in Moscow written by Robert A.D. Ford and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 1989-12-15 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The world is large; Russia is great; death is inevitable." Almost forty years ago Robert A.D. Ford came across this sentence in a Russian school primer. It stays with him today as an example of the Russian psyche, a psyche that Ford is better equipped to explain than most. He is the only Western diplomat to have known and dealt with all the Soviet leaders from the end of the Second World War to the present: Stalin, Krushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev. As a poet and translator of Russian poetry, he also had a special entrée into the Soviet literary world. In this memoir he offers a unique perspective on post-war Soviet politics and Russian life.

Download or read book Imposing Maintaining and Tearing Open the Iron Curtain written by Mark Kramer and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2013-11-22 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cold War began in Europe in the mid-1940s and ended there in 1989. Notions of a “global Cold War” are useful in describing the wide impact and scope of the East-West divide after World War II, but first and foremost the Cold War was about the standoff in Europe. The Soviet Union established a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe in the mid-1940s that later became institutionalized in the Warsaw Pact, an organization that was offset by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) led by the United States. The fundamental division of Europe persisted for forty years, coming to an end only when Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe dissolved. Imposing, Maintaining, and Tearing Open the Iron Curtain: The Cold War and East-Central Europe, 1945–1989, edited by Mark Kramer and Vít Smetana, consists of cutting-edge essays by distinguished experts who discuss the Cold War in Europe from beginning to end, with a particular focus on the countries that were behind the iron curtain. The contributors take account of structural conditions that helped generate the Cold War schism in Europe, but they also ascribe agency to local actors as well as to the superpowers. The chapters dealing with the end of the Cold War in Europe explain not only why it ended but also why the events leading to that outcome occurred almost entirely peacefully.

Download or read book The Dynamics of the Breakthrough in Eastern Europe written by Jadwiga Staniszkis and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding the dramatic political, social, and economic changes that have taken place in Poland in the mid-1980s is one key to predicting the future of the communist bloc. Jadwiga Staniszkis, an influential, internationally known expert on contemporary trends in Eastern Europe, provides an insider's analysis that deserves the attention of all scholars interested in the region. Staniszkis presents the breakthrough of 1989 as a consequence not only of systemic contradictions within socialism but also of a series of chance events. These events include unique historical circumstances such as the emergence of the "globalist" faction in Mosow, with its new, world-system perception of crisis, and the discovery of the round-table technique as a productive ritual of communication, imitated all over Eastern Europe. After describing the development, collapse, and reorganization of a "new center" in Poland in 1989-1990, she discusses the first attempt at privatizing the economy. Her analysis of the dilemmas accompanying breakthrough and transition is an invaluable guide to the challenges that face both capitalism and democracy in Eastern Europe.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism written by S. A. Smith and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-01-09 with total page 834 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The impact of Communism on the twentieth century was massive, equal to that of the two world wars. Until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, historians knew relatively little about the secretive world of communist states and parties. Since then, the opening of state, party, and diplomatic archives of the former Eastern Bloc has released a flood of new documentation. The thirty-five essays in this Handbook, written by an international team of scholars, draw on this new material to offer a global history of communism in the twentieth century. In contrast to many histories that concentrate on the Soviet Union, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism is genuinely global in its coverage, paying particular attention to the Chinese Revolution. It is 'global', too, in the sense that the essays seek to integrate history 'from above' and 'from below', to trace the complex mediations between state and society, and to explore the social and cultural as well as the political and economic realities that shaped the lives of citizens fated to live under communist rule. The essays reflect on the similarities and differences between communist states in order to situate them in their socio-political and cultural contexts and to capture their changing nature over time. Where appropriate, they also reflect on how the fortunes of international communism were shaped by the wider economic, political, and cultural forces of the capitalist world. The Handbook provides an informative introduction for those new to the field and a comprehensive overview of the current state of scholarship for those seeking to deepen their understanding.

Download or read book Past for the Eyes written by Oksana Sarkisova and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do museums and cinema shape the image of the Communist past in today’s Central and Eastern Europe? This volume is the first systematic analysis of how visual techniques are used to understand and put into context the former regimes. After history “ended” in the Eastern Bloc in 1989, museums and other memorials mushroomed all over the region. These efforts tried both to explain the meaning of this lost history, as well as to shape public opinion on their society’s shared post-war heritage. Museums and films made political use of recollections of the recent past, and employed selected museum, memorial, and media tools and tactics to make its political intent historically credible. Thirteen essays from scholars around the region take a fresh look at the subject as they address the strategies of fashioning popular perceptions of the recent past.

Download or read book The Revolutions of 1989 written by Vladimir Tismaneanu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-07-28 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Revolutions of 1989 is a collection of both classic and recent articles examining the causes and consequences of the collapse of communism in East and Central Europe, the most important event in recent world history. It includes discussion of: * the economic, political and social nature of revolutions * the role of dissidents and civil society in encouraging the breakdown of eastern * European communist regimes * comparisons with other revolutions * the extent of the collapse of Leninist regimes in East-Central Europe. European historians, scholars and students will wnat to make this an integral part of their studies.

Download or read book The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire written by A. Wess Mitchell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-10 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Habsburg Empire's grand strategy for outmaneuvering and outlasting stronger rivals in a complicated geopolitical world The Empire of Habsburg Austria faced more enemies than any other European great power. Flanked on four sides by rivals, it possessed few of the advantages that explain successful empires. Yet somehow Austria endured, outlasting Ottoman sieges, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon. A. Wess Mitchell tells the story of how this cash-strapped, polyglot empire survived for centuries in Europe's most dangerous neighborhood without succumbing to the pressures of multisided warfare. He shows how the Habsburgs played the long game in geopolitics, corralling friend and foe alike into voluntarily managing the empire's lengthy frontiers and extending a benign hegemony across the turbulent lands of middle Europe. The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire offers lessons on how to navigate a messy geopolitical map, stand firm without the advantage of military predominance, and prevail against multiple rivals.

Download or read book Europe since 1989 written by Philipp Ther and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-21 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning history of the transformation of Europe between 1989 and today In this award-winning book, Philipp Ther provides the first comprehensive history of post-1989 Europe, offering a sweeping narrative filled with vivid details and memorable stories. Europe since 1989 shows how liberalization, deregulation, and privatization had catastrophic effects on former Soviet Bloc countries. Ther refutes the idea that this economic “shock therapy” was the basis of later growth, arguing that human capital and the “transformation from below” determined economic success or failure. He also shows how the capitalist West’s effort to reshape Eastern Europe in its own likeness ended up reshaping Western Europe, especially Germany. Bringing the story up to the present, Ther compares Eastern and Southern Europe after the 2008–9 global financial crisis. A compelling account of how the new order of Europe was wrought from the chaotic aftermath of the Cold War, Europe since 1989 is essential reading for understanding post-Brexit Europe and the present dangers for democracy and the European Union.

Download or read book The Legacy of Division written by Ferenc Laczó and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the legacy of the East–West divide since the implosion of the communist regimes in Europe. The ideals of 1989 have largely been frustrated by the crises and turmoil of the past decade. The liberal consensus was first challenged as early as the mid-2000s. In Eastern Europe, grievances were directed against the prevailing narratives of transition and ever sharper ethnic-racial antipathies surfaced in opposition to a supposedly postnational and multicultural West. In Western Europe, voices regretting the European Union's supposedly careless and premature expansion eastward began to appear on both sides of the left–right and liberal–conservative divides. The possibility of convergence between Europe's two halves has been reconceived as a threat to the European project. In a series of original essays and conversations, thirty-three contributors from the fields of European and global history, politics and culture address questions fundamental to our understanding of Europe today: How have perceptions and misperceptions between the two halves of the continent changed over the last three decades? Can one speak of a new East–West split? If so, what characterizes it and why has it reemerged? The contributions demonstrate a great variety of approaches, perspectives, emphases, and arguments in addressing the daunting dilemma of Europe's assumed East–West divide.