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 The Road to Communism written by Ted Gottfried and published by Twenty-First Century Books. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the Czarist Russian Empire in the 1800s, the birth of Bolshevism, events leading to the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the development of new political structures in its aftermath.
Download or read book The Road to Disillusion written by Ray Taras and published by M.E. Sharpe. This book was released on 1992 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an overview, and examinations of eight eastern European countries, analysts show how reformers within Marxism have succeeded in demolishing both the philosophy and the regimes it served, without being able to replace either. Paper edition (unseen), $15.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Governing the Post communist City written by Martin Horak and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When faced with the rapid and disorienting transition from communism to democracy, many eastern European leaders sought simple, immediately rewarding answers to complex policy problems. Undoubtedly, this hurried approach had a significant impact on the quality of democratic government in formerly communist countries. Through an analysis of urban politics in Prague between 1990 and 2000, Governing the Post-Communist City sheds new light on the factors that shaped policy in eastern Europe at the time of its democratic transformation. The first book-length study of post-communist urban politics in a city outside of Russia, Governing the Post-Communist City links the difficulties of democratic government in 1990s Prague to decisions made shortly after the fall of communism. Focusing on the issues of road infrastructure and downtown development, Martin Horak argues that local leadership was more concerned with insulating policy-making processes from public influence than with creating new policies suited to post-communist urban development. This set a precedent for the whole institutional environment of post-communist Prague and entrenched itself in the city's politics throughout the 1990s. Original, engaging, and authoritative, this study has much to say about the political climate in Prague after the downfall of communism, and makes insightful conclusions about the factors that contributed to present political circumstances in the region.
Download or read book A Road Is Made written by Stephen Anthony Smith and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The book culminates in a detailed analysis of the three armed uprisings which led to the CCP's briefly taking power in March 1927, before being crushed by the troops of Chiang Kai-shek. The study highlights the extent to which the Soviet Union sought to control China's national revolution, yet also reveals how divisions at every level of the Comintern allowed the CCP to achieve a degree of independence and to conduct a policy at considerable variance with that laid down by Moscow." "In addition to using the wealth of Chinese material that has become available since the 1980s, this study is the first to make use of the Comintern materials that have become available since the collapse of the Soviet Union."--Jacket.
Download or read book Varieties of Post communist Capitalism written by Iván Szelényi and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-11-26 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book intends to be a contribution to the “varieties of capitalism” paradigm. The theoretical background is Weber’s theory of legitimacy. Was communism ever “legitimate”? What kind of legitimacy claims were made in the transition from communism to capitalism? Central Europe was closer to the Western “liberal” model. Russia built capitalism in a patrimonial way. China followed its own unique way; some called it “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. Putin experiments with an innovation for post-communist capitalism. He confronts the “oligarchs” and reallocates property from those who challenge his political authority to old and new loyal ones. In conclusion, the central question is to what extent is “Putinism” a generic model for post-communist capitalism?
Download or read book Lost in Transition written by Kristen Ghodsee and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-14 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through ethnographic essays and short stories based on her experiences in Eastern Europe between 1989 and 2009, Kristen Ghodsee explains why many Eastern Europeans are nostalgic for the communist past.
Download or read book Post Communist Romania at Twenty Five written by Lavinia Stan and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-06-24 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2014 marked the 25th anniversary of the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe. The events of 1989 are widely seen as having ushered in new all-encompassing reforms in almost all areas of life. In few other places were reforms more contested and divisive than in Romania, a country that suffered greatly under the sultanistic-cum-totalitarian dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu, faced the region’s only bloody anti-communist revolt, and as such had the longest to travel on the road from communism to democracy. We now have a generation’s worth of experience with these wrenching reforms that have deeply affected Romania’s political institutions and political culture, and ultimately allowed it to become a member of the coveted European Union club. This volume gathers key lessons for democratic theory and practice from Romania’s first twenty-five years of post-communist transformation. Written by leading experts in the field of Romanian Studies, the chapters focus on the most important factors that have shaped the country’s political transformation during the first 25 years of post-communism.
Download or read book Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy written by Richard Davis Anderson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2001-12-02 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did the wave of democracy that swept the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe starting more than a decade ago develop in ways unexpected by observers who relied on existing theories of democracy? In Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy, four distinguished scholars conduct the first major assessment of democratization theory in light of the experience of postcommunist states. Richard Anderson, Steven Fish, Stephen Hanson, and Philip Roeder not only apply theory to practice, but using a wealth of empirical evidence, draw together the elements of existing theory into new syntheses. The authors each highlight a development in postcommunist societies that reveals an anomaly or lacuna in existing theory. They explain why authoritarian leaders abandon authoritarianism, why democratization sometimes reverses course, how subjects become citizens by beginning to take sides in politics, how rulers become politicians by beginning to seek popular support, and not least, how democracy becomes consolidated. Rather than converging on a single approach, each author shows how either a rationalist, institutionalist, discursive, or Weberian approach sheds light on this transformation. They conclude that the experience of postcommunist democracy demands a rethinking of existing theory. To that end, they offer rich new insights to scholars, advanced students, policymakers, and anyone interested in postcommunist states or in comparative democratization.
Download or read book Postcommunist Film Russia Eastern Europe and World Culture written by Lars Kristensen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-02-28 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A post-communist condition has arisen from the fall of the Berlin Wall and later the Soviet Empire: this book looks at how this condition has manifested itself globally in the production of post-communist film. It argues post-communism is a shared experience on a geopolitical level, unlimited by national state borders, and examines post-communist cross culturalism and global totalitarianism within film. The book examines different national cinemas and dissimilar cinematic modes - from Russian blockbuster cinema to Chinese independent cinema; from Serbian city films to revolutionary films of Mozambique - all formulated as within the postcommunist condition. It considers the postcommunist film in terms of transnational and World cinema. It covers a wide range of films from small and independent filmmaking to mainstream, popular cinema, and explains post-communist signifiers as manifested in visual culture both inside and outside former, and current, communist countries.
Download or read book Highway and Byways written by János Kornai and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hungarian economist Janos Kornai first used the metaphor of a single path to postsocialist transition in his earlier book, The Road to a Free Economy. The new metaphor that frames this collection of eight recent studies reflects a broader perspective and understanding of the complexities of transition: every highway and byway leads eventually to capitalism, Kornai observes, but to what kind, how fast, and at what cost? Who wins and who loses? Kornai draws from his experiences of Hungarian reform as well as from countries of the former Soviet Union to make several major points. The first three studies describe what went wrong in countries that tried to mix elements of planned and market economies. Efforts made by communist countries to introduce market socialism (the "middle road") contained an inherent contradiction between the logic of socialism and the logic of a free enterprise system, and were doomed to failure. In the studies that follow, Kornai analyzes the on-going dilemmas. The transition from communism to free enterprise is filled with daunting hurdles; it requires no less than redefining ownership, changing values concerning the distribution of wealth, transferring the control of political power, creating financial institutions and enforcing financial discipline, and making deep economic sacrifice. Kornai closes with an overall survey of postsocialist transition, describing the stages that countries tend to go through, that will be particularly useful to scholars of comparative economic systems.
Download or read book The Road to Post Communism written by Geoffrey A. Hosking and published by Burns & Oates. This book was released on 1992 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considers the growth of independent political movements on the ground since 1985 to the present day in the former Soviet Union. The text shows how these movements grew and became a factor in Soviet politics and what role they play in the development of civil society as is known to true democracies.
Download or read book The Road to Disillusion From Critical Marxism to Post communism in Eastern Europe written by Raymond C. Taras and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-02-24 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of reform movements in postwar Eastern Europe is ultimately ironic, inasmuch as the reformers' successes and defeats alike served to discredit and demoralize the regimes they sought to redeem. The essays in this volume examine the historic and present-day role of the internal critics who, whatever their intentions, used Marxism as critique to demolish Marxism as ideocracy, but did not succeed in replacing it. Included here are essays by James P. Scanlan on the USSR, Ferenc Feher on Hungary, Leslie Holmes on the German Democratic Republic, Raymond Taras on Poland, James Satterwhite on Czechoslovakia, Vladimir Tismaneanu on Romania, Mark Baskin on Bulgaria, and Oskar Gruenwald on Yugoslavia. In concert, the contributors provide a comprehensive intellectual history and a veritable Who's Who of revisionist Marxism in Eastern Europe.
Download or read book Post communist Nostalgia written by Maria Todorova and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the end of the Cold War was greeted with great enthusiasm by people in the East and the West, the ensuing social and especially economic changes did not always result in the hoped-for improvements in people's lives. This led to widespread disillusionment that can be observed today all across Eastern Europe. Not simply a longing for security, stability, and prosperity, this nostalgia is also a sense of loss regarding a specific form of sociability. Even some of those who opposed communism express a desire to invest their new lives with renewed meaning and dignity. Among the younger generation, it surfaces as a tentative yet growing curiosity about the recent past. In this volume scholars from multiple disciplines explore the various fascinating aspects of this nostalgic turn by analyzing the impact of generational clusters, the rural-urban divide, gender differences, and political orientation. They argue persuasively that this nostalgia should not be seen as a wish to restore the past, as it has otherwise been understood, but instead it should be recognized as part of a more complex healing process and an attempt to come to terms both with the communist era as well as the new inequalities of the post-communist era.
Download or read book The Defeat of Solidarity written by David Ost and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-05 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did the fall of communism and the subsequent transition to capitalism in Eastern Europe affect the people who experienced it? And how did their anger affect the quality of the democratic systems that have emerged? Poland offers a particularly provocative case, for it was here where workers most famously seemed to have won, thanks to the role of the Solidarity trade union. And yet, within a few short years, they had clearly lost. An oppressive communist regime gave way to a capitalist society that embraced economic and political inequality, leaving many workers frustrated and angry. Their leaders first ignored them, then began to fear them, and finally tried to marginalize them. In turn, workers rejected their liberal leaders, opening the way for right-wing nationalists to take control of Solidarity. Ost tells a fascinating story about the evolution of postcommunist society in Eastern Europe. Informed by years of fieldwork in Polish factory towns, scores of interviews with workers, labor activists, and politicians, and an exhaustive reading of primary sources, his new book gives voice to those who have not been heard. But even more, Ost proposes a novel theory about the role of anger in politics to show why such voices matter, and how they profoundly affect political outcomes. Drawing on Poland's experiences, Ost describes lessons relevant to democratization throughout Eastern Europe and to democratic theory in general.
Download or read book Post Communist Democratization written by John S. Dryzek and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-06-13 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the way democracy is thought about and lived by people in the post-communist world.
Download or read book One Hundred Years of Communist Experiments written by Vladimir Tismaneanu and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why has communism’s humanist quest for freedom and social justice without exception resulted in the reign of terror and lies? The authors of this collective volume address this urgent question covering the one hundred years since Lenin’s coup brought the first communist regime to power in St. Petersburg, Russia in November 1917. The first part of the volume is dedicated to the varieties of communist fantasies of salvation, and the remaining three consider how communist experiments over many different times and regions attempted to manage economics, politics, as well as society and culture. Although each communist project was adapted to the situation of the country where it operated, the studies in this volume find that because of its ideological nature, communism had a consistent penchant for totalitarianism in all of its manifestations. This book is also concerned with the future. As the world witnesses a new wave of ideological authoritarianism and collectivistic projects, the authors of the nineteen essays suggest lessons from their analyses of communism’s past to help better resist totalitarian projects in the future.
