Download or read book Vilnius between Nations 1795 2000 written by Theodore R. Weeks and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-04 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inhabitants of Vilnius, the present-day capital of Lithuania, have spoken various languages and professed different religions while living together in relative harmony over the years. The city has played a significant role in the history and development of at least three separate cultures—Polish, Lithuanian, and Jewish—and until very recently, no single cultural-linguistic group composed the clear majority of its population. Vilnius between Nations, 1795–2000 is the first study to undertake a balanced assessment of this particularly diverse city. Theodore Weeks examines Vilnius as a physical entity where people lived, worked, and died; as the object of rhetorical struggles between disparate cultures; and as a space where the state attempted to legitimize a specific version of cultural politics through street names, monuments, and urban planning. In investigating these aspects, Weeks avoids promoting any one national narrative of the history of the city, while acknowledging the importance of national cultures and their opposing myths of the city's identity. The story of Vilnius as a multicultural city and the negotiations that allowed several national groups to inhabit a single urban space can provide lessons that are easily applied to other diverse cities. This study will appeal to scholars of Eastern Europe, urban studies, and multiculturalism, as well as general readers interested in the region.
Download or read book A History of the Baltic States written by Andres Kasekamp and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-10-26 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this key textbook, Andres Kasekamp masterfully traces the development of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, from the northern crusades against Europe's last pagans and Lithuania's rise to become one of medieval Europe's largest states, to their incorporation into the Russian Empire and the creation of their modern national identities. Employing a comparative approach, a particular emphasis is placed upon the last one hundred years, during which the Baltic states achieved independence, endured occupation by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and transformed themselves into members of the European Union. This is an essential textbook for undergraduate students taking modules on Eastern or Central European History, Communism and Post-Communism, the Soviet Union, or Baltic Culture and Politics. Engaging and accessible, this is also an ideal introduction to the Baltic States for general readers.
Download or read book Belarusian Nation Building in Times of War and Revolution written by Lizaveta Kasmach and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-20 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The proclamation of Belarusian independence on March 25, 1918, and the rival establishment of the Soviet Belarusian state on January 1, 1919, created two distinct and mutually exclusive national myths, which continue to define contemporary Belarusian society. This book examines the processes that resulted in this dual resolution in the context of World War I and the subsequent Russian Revolutions. Based on original archival material, Lizaveta Kasmach scrutinizes the development of competing concepts of Belarusian nationhood in the context of rivaling national aspirations and imperial policies. The analysis convincingly demonstrates the divisions within the nationalist movement, both politically between the moderates and socialists, and geographically between German-occupied territory with Vilna as a center versus Russian-controlled territory around Minsk. Besides the case study of Belarusian nation-building efforts, the book is a contribution to the study of the First World War in East Central Europe, approaching the war and its aftermath as a mobilizational moment in the region.
Download or read book Social and Cultural Relations in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania written by Richard Butterwick and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-04-05 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was one of the largest and most linguistically, ethnically and religiously diverse polities in late medieval and early modern Europe. In the mid-1380s the Grand Duchy of Lithuania entered into a long process of union with the Kingdom of Poland. Since the destruction of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, the history and memory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania have been much contested among its successor nations. This volume aims to excavate a level below their largely incompatible narratives. Instead, in an encounter with freshly discovered or long neglected sources, the authors of this book seek new understanding of the Grand Duchy, its citizens and inhabitants in "microhistories." Emphasizing urban and rural spaces, families, communities, networks, and travels, this book presents fresh research by established and emerging scholars.
Download or read book Cross Purposes written by Magdalena Waligórska and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-31 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No other symbol is as omnipresent in Poland as the cross. This multilayered and contradictory icon features prominently in public spaces and state institutions. It is anchored in the country's visual history, inspires protest culture, and dominates urban and rural landscapes. The cross recalls Poland's historic struggles for independence and anti-Communist dissent, but it also encapsulates the country's current position in Europe as a self-avowed bulwark of Christianity and a champion of conservative values. It is both a national symbol - defining the boundaries of Polishness in opposition to a changing constellation of the country's Others - and a key object of contestation in the creative arts and political culture. Despite its long history, the cross has never been systematically studied as a political symbol in its capacity to mobilize for action and solidify power structures. Cross Purposes is the first cultural history of the cross in modern Poland, deconstructing this key symbol and exploring how it has been deployed in different political battles.
Download or read book A Polish Woman s Experience in World War II written by Irena Protassewicz and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-02-07 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This hitherto unpublished first-hand witness account, written in 1968-9, tells the story of a privileged Polish woman whose life was torn apart by the outbreak of the Second World War and Soviet occupation. The account has been translated into English from the original Polish and interwoven with letters and depositions, and is supplemented with commentary and notes for invaluable historical context. Irena Protassewicz's vivid account begins with the Russian Revolution, followed by a rare insight into the life and mores of the landed gentry of northeastern Poland between the wars, a rural idyll which was to be shattered forever by the coming of the Second World War. Deported in a cattle truck to Siberia and sentenced to a future of forced labour, Irena's fortunes were to change dramatically after Hitler's attack on Russia. She charts the adventure and horror of life as a military nurse with the Polish Army, on a journey that would take her from the wastes of Soviet Central Asia, through the Middle East, to an unlikely ending in the highlands of Scotland. The story concludes with Irena's search to discover the wartime and post-war fate of her family and friends on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and the challenges of life as a refugee in Britain. A Polish Woman's Experience in World War II provides a compelling, personal route into understanding how the greatest conflict of the 20th century transformed the lives of the individuals who lived through it.
Download or read book Expanding the Linguistic Landscape written by Martin Pütz and published by Multilingual Matters. This book was released on 2018-12-20 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a forum for theoretical, methodological and empirical contributions to research on language(s), multimodality and public space, which will advance new ways of understanding the sociocultural, ideological and historical role of communication practices and experienced lives in a globalised world. Linguistic Landscape is viewed as a metaphor and expanded to include a wide variety of discursive modalities: imagery, non-verbal communication, silence, tactile and aural communication, graffiti, smell, etc. The chapters in this book cover a range of geographical locations, and capture the history, motives, uses, causes, ideologies, communication practices and conflicts of diverse forms of languages as they may be observed in public spaces of the physical environment. The book is anchored in a variety of theories, methodologies and frameworks, from economics, politics and sociology to linguistics and applied linguistics, literacy and education, cultural geography and human rights.
Download or read book F ggetlens g s r gt nz s written by Peter Herrmann and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2024-02-15 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hungarian historian Professor Zoltán Tefner has a remarkable academic career. This book is a tribute to his versatile, energetically continuous work. At the same time, it is a collection of current texts in which Tefner's well-known students, colleagues and members of the international scientific community deal with historically and socially significant themes, such as the construction of the European territorial order, border policy and contractual civilization, the importance of jurisprudence in the search for the civilizing process, welfare economics, a systematic conception of human being, and Hungary's critical decades in the 19th and 20th centuries. The historical and geographical arc of the texts extends from the Carolingian Empire of the 8th century to the European Union of the 2020s. Tefner Zoltán magyar történész kiemelkedő tudományos pályafutással rendelkezik. Ez a könyv tisztelgés sokrétű, nyughatatlan folyamatos munkája előtt. Ugyanakkor aktuális szöveggyűjtemény, amelyben Tefner neves tanítványai, kollégái és a nemzetközi tudományos közösség tagjai történelmi és társadalmi szempontból is fontos témákkal foglalkoznak, mint a felségterület-elrendezések és határpolitikák Európában, az európai szerződéses civilizáció szerkezete, az igazságszolgáltatás jelentősége a civilizációs folyamat értelmének keresésében, a jóléti gazdaságtan, az emberiség szisztematikus szemlélete, valamint Magyarország kritikus évtizedei a 19. és a 20. században. A szövegek történelmi és földrajzi íve a 8. századi Karoling Birodalomtól a 2020-as évek Európai Úniójáig terjed. Der ungarische Historiker Professor Zoltán Tefner hat eine bemerkenswerte akademische Karriere. Dieses Buch ist eine Hommage an sein vielseitiges, dynamisch-kontinuierliches Werk. Zugleich handelt es sich um eine Sammlung aktueller Texte, in denen sich Tefners namhafte Studierende, Kollegen und Mitglieder der internationalen Wissenschaftsgemeinschaft mit historisch und gesellschaftlich bedeutsamen Themen auseinandersetzen; wie etwa den Territorialitätsordnungen und Grenzpolitiken in Europa, dem Aufbau der europäischen Vertragszivilisation, der Bedeutung der Rechtsprechung bei der Suche nach dem Sinn des Zivilisationsprozesses, der Wohlfahrtsökonomie, dem systematischen Menschenbild und den kritischen Jahrzehnten Ungarns im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Der historische und geografische Bogen der Texte reicht vom Karolingischen Kaiserreich des 8. Jahrhunderts bis hin zur Europäischen Union der 2020er Jahre.
Download or read book Civil War in Central Europe 1918 1921 written by Jochen Böhler and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The First World War did not end in Central Europe in November 1918. The armistices marked the creation of the Second Polish Republic and the first shot of the Central European Civil War which raged from 1918 to 1921. The fallen German, Russian, and Austrian Empires left in their wake lands with peoples of mixed nationalities and ethnicities. These lands soon became battle grounds and the ethno-political violence that ensued forced those living within them to decide on their national identity. Civil War in Central Europe seeks to challenge previous notions that such conflicts which occurred between the First and Second World Wars were isolated incidents and argues that they should be considered as part of a European war; a war which transformed Poland into a nation.
Download or read book Jozef Pilsudski written by Joshua D. Zimmerman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2022-06-28 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An authoritative biography of Jozef Pilsudski, a key figure in interwar Europe regarded as the founding hero of a pluralistic and democratic modern Poland. After the first elected president was assassinated, Pilsudski lost faith in Poles’ commitment to democracy, led a military coup, and ruled as a strongman, leaving a complicated legacy.
Download or read book Voices on War and Genocide written by Omer Bartov and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2020-06-11 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking as its point of departure Omer Bartov’s acclaimed Anatomy of a Genocide, this volume brings together previously unknown accounts by three individuals from Buczacz. These rare narratives give personal glimpses into daily life in unsettled times: a Polish headmaster during World War I, a Ukrainian teacher and witness to both Soviet and German rule, and a Jewish radio technician, genocide survivor, and member of the Polish resistance. Together, they offer a prismatic perspective on a world remote from our own that nonetheless helps us understand how people not unlike ourselves responded to mass violence and destruction.
Download or read book 1939 written by Šarūnas Liekis and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2010 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This gripping and well-documented account of the history of the town of Vilnius and its surrounding region from the Polish ultimatum of March 1938, which forced Lithuania to open diplomatic relations with Poland, to the incorporation of Lithuania into the Soviet Union in June 1940 is set against the evolution of Lithuania's relations with her neighbours during this crucial period. It is a major contribution to the outbreak of war in September 1939 and the subsequent evolution of Nazi Soviet relations. Prof. Liekis presents a remarkable history based on archival sources never before utilized in any English-language study. In revealing the geopolitical, ideological, economic, social and ethnic dimensions of an immense tragedy in the heart of Europe, the author provides a new perspective on the unraveling of a society and nation during the initial days of World War II as prelude to the most violent period in European history."--Publisher's description.
Download or read book Imperial Russian Rule in the Kingdom of Poland 1864 1915 written by Malte Rolf and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Translated by Cynthia Klohr After crushing the Polish Uprising in 1863–1864,Russia established a new system of administration and control. Imperial Russian Rule in the Kingdom of Poland, 1864–1915 investigates in detail the imperial bureaucracy’s highly variable relationship with Polish society over the next half century. It portrays the personnel and policies of Russian domination and describes the numerous layers of conflict and cooperation between the Tsarist officialdom and the local population. Presenting case studies of both modes of conflict and cooperation, Malte Rolf replaces the old, unambiguous “freedom-loving Poles vs. oppressive Russians” narrative with a more nuanced account and does justice to the complexity and diversity of encounters among Poles, Jews, and Russians in this contested geopolitical space. At the same time, he highlights the process of “provincializing the center,” the process by which the erosion of imperial rule in the Polish Kingdom facilitated the demise of the Romanov dynasty itself.
Download or read book No Road Leading Back written by Chris Heath and published by Schocken. This book was released on 2024-09-03 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This by turns shattering and hope-giving account of prisoners who dug their way to freedom from the Nazis is both a stunning escape narrative and an object lesson in the ways we remember and continually forget the particulars of the Holocaust. No Road Leading Back is the remarkable story of a dozen prisoners who escaped from the site where more than 70,000 Jews were shot in the Lithuanian forest of Ponar after the Nazi invasion of Eastern Europe in 1941. Anxious to hide the incriminating evidence of the murders, the S.S. later in the war enslaved a group of Jews to exhume every one of the bodies and incinerate them all in a months-long labor—an episode whose specifics are staggering and disturbing, even within the context of the Holocaust. From within that dire circumstance emerges the improbable escape made by some of the men, who dug a tunnel with bare hands and spoons while they were trapped and guarded day and night—an act not just of bravery and desperation but of awesome imagination. Based on first-person accounts of the escapees and on each scrap of evidence that has been documented, repressed, or amplified since, this book resurrects their lives, while also providing a complex, urgent analysis of why their story has rarely been told, and never accurately. Heath explores the cultural use and misuse of Holocaust testimony and the need for us to face it—and all uncomfortable historical truths—with honesty and accuracy.
Download or read book Russia s Entangled Embrace written by Stephen Badalyan Riegg and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-15 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russia's Entangled Embrace traces the relationship between the Romanov state and the Armenian diaspora that populated Russia's territorial fringes and navigated the tsarist empire's metropolitan centers. By engaging the ongoing debates about imperial structures that were simultaneously symbiotic and hierarchically ordered, Stephen Badalyan Riegg helps us to understand how, for Armenians and some other subjects, imperial rule represented not hypothetical, clear-cut alternatives but simultaneous, messy realities. He examines why, and how, Russian architects of empire imagined Armenians as being politically desirable. These circumstances included the familiarity of their faith, perceived degree of social, political, or cultural integration, and their actual or potential contributions to the state's varied priorities. Based on extensive research in the archives of St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Yerevan, Russia's Entangled Embrace reveals that the Russian government relied on Armenians to build its empire in the Caucasus and beyond. Analyzing the complexities of this imperial relationship—beyond the reductive question of whether Russia was a friend or foe to Armenians—allows us to study the methods of tsarist imperialism in the context of diasporic distribution, interimperial conflict and alliance, nationalism, and religious and economic identity.
Download or read book Belarus Alternative Visions written by Simon M. Lewis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-31 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Belarus is often regarded as "Europe’s last dictatorship", a sort-of fossilized leftover from the Soviet Union. However, a key factor in determining Belarus’s development, including its likely future development, is its own sense of identity. This book explores the complex debates and competing narratives surrounding Belarus’s identity, revealing a far more diverse picture than the widely accepted monolithic post-Soviet nation. It examines in a range of media including historiography, films and literature how visions of Belarus as a nation have been constructed from the nineteenth century to the present day. It outlines a complex picture of contested myths – the "peasant nation" of the nineteenth century, the devoted Soviet republic of the late twentieth century and the revisionist Belarusian nationalism of the present. The author shows that Belarus is characterized by immense cultural, linguistic and ethnic polyphony, both in its lived history and in its cultural imaginary. The book analyses important examples of writing in and about Belarus, in Belarusian, Polish and Russian, revealing how different modes of rooted cosmopolitanism have been articulated.
Download or read book The Stories Old Towns Tell written by Marek Kohn and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-25 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating journey through Europe’s old towns, exploring why we treasure them—but also what they hide about a continent’s fraught history Historic quarters in cities and towns across the middle of Europe were devastated during the Second World War—some, like those of Warsaw and Frankfurt, had to be rebuilt almost completely. They are now centers of peace and civility that attract millions of tourists, but the stories they tell about places, peoples, and nations are selective. They are never the whole story. These old towns and their turbulent histories have been key sites in Europe’s ongoing theater of politics and war. Exploring seven old towns, from Frankfurt and Prague to Vilnius in Lithuania, the acclaimed writer Marek Kohn examines how they have been used since the Second World War to conceal political tensions and reinforce certain versions of history. Uncovering hidden stories behind these old and old-seeming façades, Kohn offers us a new understanding of the politics of European history-making—showing how our visits to old towns could promote belonging over exclusion, and empathy over indifference.