Eastern Europe in Revolution
Eastern Europe in Revolution
Contributor(s): Ivo Banac (Editor)
Subject(s): Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Post-Communist Transformation
Published by: CEEOL Digital Reproductions / Collections
Summary/Abstract: © 1992 CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS. In this book twelve outstanding authorities present their thoroughgoing assessments of the East European revolution of 1989—the definite collapse of communism as an ideology, a political movement, and a system of power in eight countries. All but two of the contributors focus on the revolution in an individual country or region—Poland, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Albania—and each of them addraesses the theme of regime transition. In Eastern Europe, of course, the transition from communism to . . . has been as complex and varied as the political geography of the notorious “fracture zone” itself, and individual authors thus concentrate on different sets of problems; they tell different kinds of stories. In addition, they represent several scholarly disciplines (history, political science, anthropology, sociology), and follow diverse paths as they seek to identify and analyze the social, political, and cultural factors responsible for the dramatically swift overthrow of the Communist regimes. Pointing to the enormous difficulties of systematic transformation, they measure the dangers of nationality conflict and the potential for new authoritarianism. Ivo Banac has assembled a cast with impressive credentials. Without imposing an artificial unity on its chaotic subject, their book maps out the events of 1989-90 and sets the background for figuring out where the region may be headed.
Series: CEEOL COLLECTION related to CENTRAL EUROPE / SLAVIC WORLD
- Print-ISBN-10: 0-8014-9997-6
- Page Count: 257
- Publication Year: 1992
- Language: English
Introduction
Introduction
(Introduction)
- Author(s):Ivo Banac
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Post-Communist Transformation
- Page Range:1-12
- No. of Pages:13
- Summary/Abstract:Communist Eastern Europe always had a politicized future. The expressionists and the resisters, who were not necessarily of the Right, were predisposed to recognize the weakness of Communist ideology and, hence, the conditional and inherently unstable edifice of Communist power. The cultural relativists and evolutionists, who were not necessarily of the Left, were predisposed to recognize an immense human capacity to adapt to anything that appears “natural.” They therefore exaggerated the staying power of a political order (misunderstood as society) that has been adrift since the generation of its founders. In the words of the Serbian aphorist Aleksandar Beljak, “The new times are here again. We just plain have no luck.”
- Price: 6.50 €
Remaking the Political Field in Hungary: From the Politics of Confrontation to the Politics of Competition
Remaking the Political Field in Hungary: From the Politics of Confrontation to the Politics of Competition
(Remaking the Political Field in Hungary: From the Politics of Confrontation to the Politics of Competition)
- Author(s):László Bruszt, David Stark
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Post-Communist Transformation
- Page Range:13-55
- No. of Pages:44
- Summary/Abstract:The cataclysmic dissolution of Communist regimes and the clamorous awakening of the East European peoples in 1989 prompted observers to overestimate the strength of organized democratic forces in these events. The stunning electoral victory of Solidarity in June, the public drama of Imre Nagy’s reburial in Budapest that same month, the street demonstrations in Leipzig in October, and the massive assemblies in Prague in November were all signs of popular strivings for democracy. But many observers mistook the enthusiastic expression of these aspirations as evi dence of far-reaching democratic organization and misinterpreted the first stage of transition as the already-achieved triumph of citizenship and civic values.
- Price: 6.50 €
Poland: From Civil Society to Political Nation
Poland: From Civil Society to Political Nation
(Poland: From Civil Society to Political Nation)
- Author(s):Jan Tomasz Gross
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Post-Communist Transformation
- Page Range:56-71
- No. of Pages:17
- Summary/Abstract:The notion of civil society has been elucidated over the last decade in numerous writings stemming from (and generated by interest in) East Central Europe. Narrowly constructed, civil society refers to society outside the framework of official institutions provided by the Communist state. It emphasizes, with perhaps a certain myopia (after all, official establishments ought to be given some credit for contributing to their own demise), that the emancipation of East Central Europe did not require taking over the extant institutions. From the Workers’ Defense Committee, through Charter 77 and Solidarity, up to the Neues Forum and the Obcanske Forum, enclaves of freedom where collective action took place were deliberately constructed apart from and outside of them. A new phase in the political articulation of liberty has currently taken hold of East Central Europe. It involves the enfranchisement of the state. The nations of East Central Europe, which at the civil society stage of their emancipation have demonstrated that they are real, living entities, are now constituting themselves as polities. They are in the process of authenticating their institutions. This is what I have in mind when I speak about the transition from civil society to political nation.
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“Ich will hier raus”: Emigration and the Collapse of the German Democratic Republic
“Ich will hier raus”: Emigration and the Collapse of the German Democratic Republic
(“Ich will hier raus”: Emigration and the Collapse of the German Democratic Republic)
- Author(s):Norman M. Naimark
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Post-Communist Transformation
- Page Range:72-95
- No. of Pages:25
- Summary/Abstract:The miraculous recovery of the German economy after the Second World War—the Wirtschaftswunder—took place in an atmosphere of fierce political struggle in both the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Not only did the Soviet Union and the United States fight their cold war on German territory, but Germans themselves in the West and in the East battled for control of the destiny of the divided nation. Less well known, but equally important, were the political struggles that absorbed competing forces within each of the Germanys separately. In the Federal Republic, one of the most uncompromising rivalries in postwar European politics—that between the socialist SPD (Social Democratic party) leader Kurt Schumacher and the anti-socialist CDU (Christian Democratic Union) champion Konrad Adenauer— threatened to tear West Germany apart before the economic recovery could take effect.
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Metamorphosis: The Democratic Revolution in Czechoslovakia
Metamorphosis: The Democratic Revolution in Czechoslovakia
(Metamorphosis: The Democratic Revolution in Czechoslovakia)
- Author(s):Tony R. Judt
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Post-Communist Transformation
- Page Range:96-116
- No. of Pages:22
- Summary/Abstract:In contrast with its Polish and Hungarian neighbors, Czechoslovakia in 1989 had undergone no gradual political liberalization, no partial economic reform. The regime put in place by Soviet tanks after 1968 was still there, its leaders and policies substantially unaltered. Conversely, the outcome of the country’s “velvet revolution” was a dismantling of communism more thorough and complete than anything achieved, to date, by its fellow former Soviet satellites. A discussion of the context of these changes and the problems that remain unresolved follows a brief account of how this situation came to be.
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Romania after Ceausescu: Post-Communist Communism?
Romania after Ceausescu: Post-Communist Communism?
(Romania after Ceausescu: Post-Communist Communism?)
- Author(s):Katherine Verdery, Gail Kligman
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Post-Communist Transformation
- Page Range:117-147
- No. of Pages:32
- Summary/Abstract:In this essay, we raise far more questions that we answer; we leave unresolved the contradictions among accounts we heard or have read; and we are hesitant to predict the future course of events. Indeed, our strongest claim is that for Romania, any account pretending to greater certainty than we offer is questionable. We address four areas: the “revolution” of December 1989, the much-discussed matter of whether it and the elections produced a neo-Communist restoration, the postelection weakness of Ion Iliescu’s broadly mandated government as evident in events of June 13-15, 1990, and the broader issue of continuity and change in state-society relations. Our principal message is that the situation is generally chaotic, is fraught with contradictions, and will in all likelihood worsen before improving.
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Improbable Maverick or Typical Conformist? Seven Thoughts on the New Bulgaria
Improbable Maverick or Typical Conformist? Seven Thoughts on the New Bulgaria
(Improbable Maverick or Typical Conformist? Seven Thoughts on the New Bulgaria)
- Author(s):Maria Todorova
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Post-Communist Transformation
- Page Range:148-167
- No. of Pages:21
- Summary/Abstract:The best thing about one of Timothy Garton Ash’s latest pieces, his »Ten Thoughts on the New Europe,« was his ending, that is, his Tenth Thought: »We should keep things in proportion. Most of the rest of humankind will (rightly) say: ‘If only we had your problems.’« Although Garton Ash had not envisaged Bulgaria, this key phrase of multiethnic East European origin certainly sums up the attitude Bulgarians have vis-a-vis Europe. Now that I have borrowed his conclusion (itself borrowed from East European everyday jargon), which rightly or wrongly reflects Bulgarians’ perceptions of their own and Europe’s problems, it might not be thought too immodest to propose only seven thoughts on the new Bulgaria.
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Post-Communism as Post-Yugoslavism: The Yugoslav Non-Revolutions of 1989-1990
Post-Communism as Post-Yugoslavism: The Yugoslav Non-Revolutions of 1989-1990
(Post-Communism as Post-Yugoslavism: The Yugoslav Non-Revolutions of 1989-1990)
- Author(s):Ivo Banac
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Post-Communist Transformation
- Page Range:168-187
- No. of Pages:21
- Summary/Abstract:Unlike some of its Central European neighbors Yugoslavia has not yet entered a clear post-Communist phase. This is because postwar Yugoslavia itself is the product of Communist rule. In Yugoslavia, postcommunism also means post-Yugoslavism. Andrei Amalrik’s well-known essay Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984? written in 1969, contains the following apt thought, “Just as the adoption of Christianity postponed the fall of the Roman Empire but did not prevent its inevitable end, so Marxist doctrine has delayed the break-up of the Russian Empire—the third Rome—but it does not possess the power to prevent it.” Amalrik was wrong about the agency of the breakup (there has been no war with China), but he did not underestimate the fragility of the Soviet state—the fragility of a state brittle with national contention. Analogous rules obtain in Yugoslavia. Some will protest that the overemphasis on national conflicts obscures other factors, not least of all the power of various social forces and economic changes. Perhaps. Yet, in Yugoslavia today, one can see only the apocalyptic beasts of hate and anger. Luckier observers, living in post-Yugoslav times, will be able to study the fruits of strength and movement.
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Albania: The Last Domino
Albania: The Last Domino
(Albania: The Last Domino)
- Author(s):Elez Biberaj
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Post-Communist Transformation
- Page Range:188-206
- No. of Pages:20
- Summary/Abstract:On the eve of the violent overthrow and the execution of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceau§escu in December 1989, the president of Albania and first secretary of the ruling Party of Labor (APL), Ramiz Alia, assured the world that his country was immune to the dramatic developments that were reshaping the political landscape of Eastern Europe. Addressing a meeting of the Communist-controlled Trade Unions Council on December 11, 1989, Alia confidently declared: “There are people abroad who ask: Will processes like those taking place in Eastern Europe also occur in Albania? We answer firmly and categorically: No, they will not occur in Albania.” The Albanian leader said that after the break with the Soviet bloc in 1961 and alliance with Mao Zedong’s China, Albania had embarked on a totally different political and economic road from its former allies. He added that his country was not faced with the same problems as other East European states. “The crisis that is sweeping the countries in the East is the crisis of a definite community, the crisis of what used to be called the socialist community, but not the crisis of socialism as a theory and practice. Consequently, the events taking place there have nothing to do with us.
- Price: 6.50 €
The Leninist Legacy
The Leninist Legacy
(The Leninist Legacy)
- Author(s):Ken Jowitt
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Post-Communist Transformation
- Page Range:207-224
- No. of Pages:19
- Summary/Abstract:Eastern Europe’s boundaries—political, ideological, economic, and military—have been radically redefined twice in less than a century. As Tony Judt has written, at the end of the First World War, “the disappearance of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (a truly momentous event in European history) left a huge gap in the conceptual geography of the continent. Of what did Central Europe now consist? What was East, what West in a landmass whose political divisions had been utterly and unrecognizably remade within a single lifetime”? In 1989 the Soviet bloc became extinct as Communist parties in every East European country added the loss of political power to their earlier loss of ideological purpose during the phase of “real socialism”; and the Soviet Union, the “stern, . . . impersonal, perpetual Center” of this imperium not only tolerated but instigated its collapse. The result is a no less significant gap in Europe’s “conceptual geography” than seventy years ago.
- Price: 6.50 €
Social and Political Landscape, Central Europe, Fall 1990
Social and Political Landscape, Central Europe, Fall 1990
(Social and Political Landscape, Central Europe, Fall 1990)
- Author(s):Iván Szelényi
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Post-Communist Transformation
- Page Range:225-241
- No. of Pages:18
- Summary/Abstract:By the fall of 1990 the countries of Central Europe were progressing with great determination toward a “free economy” or toward liberal capitalism. Two or three years earlier, social scientists who tried to comment on current developments and forecast the future of the region had sensed that a window of opportunity was opening up for Central Europe. 1 The economic and political structure of state socialism was beginning to disintegrate. For decades it had appeared that the degree of freedom in these societies was about zero. Their rigid internal structure and the tight Soviet control over them almost completely determined their developmental trajectory. During the 1980s, cracks began to appear in the edifice of state socialism. The Polish socioeconomic order collapsed. Hungary and Yugoslavia were sliding into deepening economic recession and aggravated crises of legitimation. Even the Czechoslovak and East German elites began to lose their grip on power. On top of this the dissolution of the Soviet empire began. Under these circumstances, it appeared by 1986-87 that a wide range of alternative futures were be coming possible for the region.
- Price: 6.50 €
Contributors
Contributors
(Contributors)
- Author(s):Author Not Specified
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Bibliography
- Page Range:243-244
- No. of Pages:2
Index
Index
(Index)
- Author(s):Author Not Specified
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Bibliography
- Page Range:154-158
- No. of Pages:14
