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While there are still occasional uses of it today, the term "Central Europe" carries little of the charge that it did in the 1980s and early 1990s, and as a political and intellectual project it has receded from the horizon. Proponents of a distinct cultural profile of these countries—all involved now in the process of Transatlantic integration—used "Central European", as a contestation with the geo-political label of Eastern Europe. This book discusses the transnational set of practices connecting journals with other media in the mid-1980s, disseminating the idea of Central Europe simultaneously in East and West. A range of new methodologies, including GIS-mapping visualization, is used...
During the four decades of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia a vast literature on working-class movements has been produced but it has hardly any value for today's scholarship. This remarkable study reopens the field. Based on Czech, Slovak, German and other sources, it focuses on the history of the multi-ethnic social democratic labor movement in Slovakia's capital Bratislava during the period 1867-1921, and on the process of national revolution during the years 1918-19 in particular. The study places the historic change of the former Pressburg into the modern Bratislava in the broader context of the development of multinational pre-1918 Hungary, the evolution of social, ethnic, and political relations in multi-ethnic Pressburg (a 'tri-national' city of Germans, Magyars, and Slovaks), and the development of the multinational labor movement in Hungary and the Habsburg Empire as a whole.
"The hundred years between the revolutions of 1848 and the population transfers of the mid-twentieth century saw the nationalization of culturally complex societies in East Central Europe. This fact has variously been explained in terms of modernization, state building, and nation-building theories, each of which treats the process of nationalization as something inexorable, a necessary component of modernity. Although more recently social scientists gesture to the contingencies that may shape these larger developments, this structural approach makes scholars far less attentive to the "hard work" (ideological, political, social) undertaken by individuals and groups at every level of society ...
A groundbreaking comparative history of the formation of Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, from their origins in the eleventh century.
This book provides a thorough introduction to East Central Europe and its renewed emergence since the momentous changes in the former Soviet bloc. By carefully differentiating between Central Europe, East Central Europe and the Balkans, Attila [ac]Agh shows how the term `Eastern Europe′ was a political misnomer of the Cold War. Drawing on theories of democratization to develop a common conceptual and theoretical framework, this textbook is the first to place the political and social changes of this complex region in a genuinely comparative perspective. Through broad thematic sections the student is shown how to distinguish between processes of democratization and redemocratization, transition and transformation and is introduced to the important issues of Europeanization, nation-building, institutionalization, parties and political culture. Illustrated throughout with chronological charts and the latest data analysis, this is an invaluable guide to the emerging political systems and their future prospects at the core of the new Europe.
As a Slavic-speaking religious and ethnic “Other” living just a stone’s throw from the symbolic heart of the continent, the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina have long occupied a liminal space in the European imagination. To a significant degree, the wider representations and perceptions of this population can be traced to the reports of Central European—and especially Habsburg—diplomats, scholars, journalists, tourists, and other observers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This volume assembles contributions from historians, anthropologists, political scientists, and literary scholars to examine the political, social, and discursive dimensions of Bosnian Muslims’ encounters with the West since the nineteenth century.
Provides recommendations for accomodations, shopping, trip itineraries, and restaurants, with a brief overview of the regions history and people.
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD A daring literary masterpiece of historical fiction that weaves together the gripping stories of those caught in the web of authoritarian rule. Through interwoven narratives that paint a portrait of 20th century Germany and the USSR and the monstrous age they defined, Europe Central captures a chorus of voices both real and fictional—a young German who joins the SS to fight its crimes, two generals who collaborate with the enemy for different reasons, and the tumultuous life of Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich amidst Stalinist oppression. In this magnificent work of fiction, acclaimed author William T. Vollmann turns his trenchant eye on these two authoritarian cultures to render a mesmerizing perspective on human experience during wartime.
This book draws attention to selected aspects of the Central European reality and discusses interesting subjects related to the political, economic and social landscape of the region, which are in a continuous process of transformation. The book will be a useful source of knowledge, as Central Europe is still considered to be an “undiscovered island” in the “changeable waters” of contemporary international relations.