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Reassessing Communism
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 440

Reassessing Communism

The thirteen authors of this collective work undertook to articulate matter-of-fact critiques of the dominant narrative about communism in Poland while offering new analyses of the concept, and also examining the manifestations of anticommunism. Approaching communist ideas and practices, programs and their implementations, as an inseparable whole, they examine the issues of emancipation, upward social mobility, and changes in the cultural canon. The authors refuse to treat communism in Poland in simplistic categories of totalitarianism, absolute evil and Soviet colonization, and similarly refuse to equate communism and fascism. Nor do they adopt the neoliberal view of communism as a project ...

The Political Economy of State-Society Relations in Hungary and Poland
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 219

The Political Economy of State-Society Relations in Hungary and Poland

This book shows how Hungary and Poland led the transformations that brought down Communism.

The Pope, the Public, and International Relations
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 215

The Pope, the Public, and International Relations

This edited volume engages a long-standing religious power, the Holy See, to discuss the impact of the structural and postsecular transformations of international relations through the emergence of a global and digital public sphere. Despite the legal construction that enables the separation of the Holy See as a distinct legal entity, it is also an instrument for the papacy to represent externally and regulate internally the global and transnational Catholic Church. The Holy See is also the tool that enables the papacy to address a transnational or a global public beyond Catholic adherence – most prominently through journeys that are often at the same time state visits and pastoral journeys. Instead of understanding these hybrid roles as an irregular exemption, the contributions of the book argue that the Holy See should be seen as a certainly special but nevertheless quite normal actor of international and public diplomacy.

The Dilemmas of Dissidence in East-Central Europe
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 516

The Dilemmas of Dissidence in East-Central Europe

Discusses one of the major currents leading to the fall of communism. Falk examines the intellectual dissident movements in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary from the late 1960s through to 1989. In spite of its historic significance, no other comprehensive survey has appeared on the subject. In addition to the huge list of written sources from samizdat works to recent essays, Falks sources include interviews with many personalities of those events as well as videos and films (including Oscar winners).

Western Marxism and the Soviet Union
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 392

Western Marxism and the Soviet Union

  • Type: Book
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  • Published: 2007-06-30
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  • Publisher: BRILL

The ‘Russian Question’ was an absolutely central problem for Marxism in the twentieth century. Numerous attempts were made to understand the nature of Soviet society. The present book tries to portray the development of these theoretical contributions since 1917 in a coherent, comprehensive appraisal. It aims to present the development of the Western Marxist critique of the Soviet Union across a rather long period in history (from 1917 to the present) and in a large region (Western Europe and North America). Within this demarcation of limits in time and space, an effort has been made to ensure completeness, by paying attention to all Marxist analyses which in some way significantly deviated from or added to the older theories.

Political Economy of New Pragmatism
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 279

Political Economy of New Pragmatism

This book provides answers to fundamental questions of sustainable development and international cooperation in light of irreversible globalization. Based on comprehensive research and a wealth of experience from his own political activities, the author offers an insightful analysis of the globalized economy and its political, cultural and ecological context. Presenting an objective assessment, the author diagnoses the state of affairs and formulates recipes to overcome present day challenges, such as income inequalities, climate change, demographic imbalance and the new Cold War, which overlap with the “black trinity”: populism, nationalism and authoritarianism. "Grzegorz Kolodko is one...

Pan-Slavism and Slavophilia in Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 435

Pan-Slavism and Slavophilia in Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe

This book explores origins, manifestations, and functions of Pan-Slavism in contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, arguing that despite the extinction of Pan-Slavism as an articulated Romantic-era geopolitical ideology, a number of related discourses, metaphors, and emotions have spilled over into the mainstream debates and popular imagination. Using the term Slavophilia to capture the range of representations, the volume analyses how geopolitical discourses shape the identity and policies of a community, providing a comparative analysis that covers a range of Slavic countries in order to understand how Pan-Slavism works and resonates across geographic and political contexts.

The Polish Elite and Language Sciences
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 520

The Polish Elite and Language Sciences

This book revisits the modern history of Poland, from the perspective of its social sciences. The book makes this case study a model for the application of Bourdieu’s approach to the historical analysis of non-core Western societies. The book is, in other words, a reflexive study of the application of Bourdieu’s social theory. At the same time, it also critically studies the application of Western social theory in Poland, which is largely seen as a peripheral country. The study of Polish social sciences, with particular emphasis on linguistics and literary studies, points to the peculiar dynamics of peripheral intellectual and academic fields and their external dependencies. These insigh...

Small Baltic States and the Euro-Atlantic Security Community
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 278

Small Baltic States and the Euro-Atlantic Security Community

This book analyzes the small Baltic States and their integration into the Euro-Atlantic structures from the perspective of the foreign policies of major powers - the United States, Russia, and major European powers and institutions - towards the region, or each of the Baltic States. While focusing primarily on the Post-Cold war period, it will also cover years of Baltic occupation, areas and matters related to their motivation and means to join the EU and NATO. Smallness, weaknesses and sensitivities as well as historic experiences of three Baltic States made the task to integrate with the Euro-Atlantic community urgent. This will be a valuable source of information for all interested in the Baltic States, foreign policies of major powers shaping events in the region, the surge of the Euro-Atlantic community and the Post-Cold War enlargement allowing small Baltic States to remedy their inherent security weaknesses.

The Burdens of Freedom
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 183

The Burdens of Freedom

From Estonia to Macedonia, this book is a history of 15 countries as they negotiate their transition from communism. For some, the story ends happily, with triumphant entry into the European Union in 2004.Others are caught in limbo, destroyed by nationalist politics, war and genocide, or crippled by corrupt political practices. The Burdens of Freedom considers the effects of revolutionary change, the resurgence of nationalism and the painful examination of the past. It looks at the process of building stable democratic states, and their integration with international structures. Most of the countries have established admission to the EU as a national objective; but many of them have also been active participants in the American-led occupation of Iraq. Domestically, each has seen a divide emerge between winners and losers. All are moving forward simultaneously to democracy, unity and prosperity, but also to national division and economic disparity.