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Gale Stokes' The Walls Came Tumbling Down has been one of the standard interpretations of the East European revolutions of 1989 for many years. It offers a sweeping yet vivid narrative of the two decades of developments that led from the Prague Spring of 1968 to the collapse of communism in 1989. Highlights of that narrative include, among other things, discussions of Solidarity and civil society in Poland, Charter 77 and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and the bizarre regime of Romania's Nikolae Ceausescu and his violent downfall. In this second edition, now appropriately subtitled Collapse and Rebirth in Eastern Europe, Stokes not only has revised these portions of the book in the light of recent scholarship, but has added three new chapters covering the post-communist period, including analyses of the unification of Germany and the collapse of the Soviet Union, narratives of the admission of many of the countries of the region to the European Union, and discussion of the unfortunate outcomes of the Wars of Yugoslav Succession in the Western Balkans.
Looks at the forces that helped defeat communism in Eastern Europe, including Solidarity and Charter 77, a group of Czech intellectuals who demanded that their government obey its own laws
The revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe made it possible for people who had always considered themselves part of the European mainstream to reemerge from two generations of Communist separation. At the same time, however, the war in the former Yugoslavia threw doubt on the stability of the region. In Three Eras of Political Change in Eastern Europe, Gale Stokes, a noted specialist on the history of Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia, covers a broad range of topics, including the revolutions of 1989. The first section of the text describes the historical sources of the regions distinctiveness. Part two illuminates the background of the 1990s crisis in Yugoslavia and the final section discusses t...
Eastern Europe addresses the emergence of uncertain pluralism in the region following the disintegration of the communist regimes in 1989. Taking a broad historical approach, the volume considers issues and challenges that have marked Eastern Europe from 1939 through World War II and the era of socialism, up to the present. Eight comprehensive country studies are augmented by detailed assessments of economic developments, security issues, religious currents, cultural policies, and gender relations in the region.
Bringing together a wealth of historical documents, memoirs, essays, and literature from Eastern Europe, this unique book vividly illustrates how the most original and challenging minds of the region have understood and reacted to Stalinism and its successors since the end of the Second World War. From Stalinism to Pluralism creates a rich mosaic of political and historical development in these countries, presenting extracts from the works of Leszek Kolakowski, Czeslaw Milosz, Milovan Djilas, George Lukacs, Vaclav Havel, Adam Michnik, and George Konrad alongside such seminal primary documents as the Yalta Agreement, the Helsinki Accords, and the Gdansk Agreement, to show that the revolutiona...
This collection of essays examines Yugoslavia's dissolution and the subsequent wars.
Twentieth-century Southeastern Europe endured three, separate decades of international and civil war, and was marred in forced migration and wrenching systematic changes. This book is the result of a year-long project by the Open Society Institute to examine and reappraise this tumultuous century. A cohort of young scholars with backgrounds in history, anthropology, political science, and comparative literature were brought together for this undertaking. The studies invite attention to fascism, socialism, and liberalism as well as nationalism and Communism. While most chapters deal with war and confrontation, they focus rather on the remembrance of such conflicts in shaping today's ideology ...
A comprehensive analysis of the progress and problems of post-communist development attending to aspects of transition in the region as a whole and to specific issues in Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech and Slovak Republics, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Rumania, and Yugoslavia. Goldman (political science, Northeastern U.) diagrams the commonalities of development and the diversity of the various countries' rejection of communism, setting forth the difficulties in moving from communist monolithic authoritarianism to pluralistic democracy, coping with threats to progress and stability, and the international implications of these transitions. Paper edition (758-5), $32.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
"The book contains a presentation and critical consideration of the ideas of historians on the major problems, processes, events, and personalities of the era of the Bulgarian (national) Revival. It is dominated by the effort to understand how the Bulgarian Revival has been conceived of and imagined while keeping a certain distance from the various views presented, whether critical, ironic, or simply that inherent in the presentation of another person's view."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Even before it collapsed into civil war, ethnic cleansing, and dissolution, Yugoslavia was an archetypical example of a troubled multinational mosaic, a state without a single national base or even a majority. Its stability and very existence were challenged repeatedly by the tension between the pressures for overarching political cohesion and the defense of separate national identities and aspirations.In a brilliant analysis of this complex and sensitive national question, Ivo Banac provides a comprehensive introduction to Yugoslav political history. His book is a genetic study of the ideas, circumstances, and events that shaped the pattern of relations among the nationalities of Yugoslavia...