The Social Origins of East European Politics
The Social Origins of East European Politics

Summary/Abstract: In considering the problem of how East European societies have been transformed in the past two centuries it is proper to start with the fundamental impact of external influences, particularly the industrial and French revolutions, as well as to take into account the state system within which Eastern Europe awakened to these two revolutions. There is nothing demeaning in this, even though such analysis sometimes goes by the name dependency theory, because every society in the world, even including to a certain extent the core countries of Northwestern Europe, has had to participate in this same confrontation. Despite the well deserved criticisms that modernization theory has undergone, it remains true that the history of most societies includes a lengthy period that precedes the coming of industrialization, a brief transitional period of initial contact and confrontation, and the present, which contains the first moments in what may be another lengthy period of a new relationship between man and nature. [...]

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