You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
A comprehensive and revelatory history of modern Belarus - from independence to 2020’s contested election In 2020 Belarus made headlines around the world when protests erupted in the aftermath of a fraught presidential election. Andrew Wilson explores both Belarus’s complicated road to nationhood and its politics and economics since it gained independence in 1991. Two new chapters reveal the extent of Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s grip on power, the growth of the opposition movement and the violent crackdown that followed the vote. Wilson also examines the prospects for Europe as a whole of either Lukashenka’s downfall or his survival with Russian support. “Andrew Wilson has done all students of European politics a great service by making the history of Belarus comprehensible and by showing how the future of Belarus might be different than its present.”—Timothy Snyder, author of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
The conversion of the lands on the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic Sea by Germans, Danes and Swedes in the period from 1150 to 1400 represented the last great struggle between Christianity and paganism on the European continent, but for the indigenous peoples of Finland, Livonia, Prussia, Lithuania and Pomerania, it was also a period of wider cultural conflict and transformation. Along with the Christian faith came a new and foreign culture: the German and Scandinavian languages of the crusaders and the Latin of their priests, new names for places, superior military technology, and churches and fortifications built of stone. For newly baptized populations, the acceptance of Christi...
How does a ruler become "the Great"? Is greatness a part of authority exercised or a part of an image created? These and other questions are addressed in this volume on the life and memory of Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania (r.1392-1430). The study raises a hypothesis that Vytautas was the main engineer of his image as the great ruler while his contemporaries and later generations developed this image and adapted it to their needs and understandings. Investigating the propaganda surrounding the grand duke, this study reveals that, in fact, there were two opposite images: that of a good ruler and that of a tyrant. The paradox is that frequently these opposites were based on the same features of the grand duke's character or episodes from his biography. The research is based on a wide array of written and visual sources as well as on records of oral tradition. Rich and diverse primary materials are analysed from the perspectives of political and social history, memorial culture, as well as iconography and rhetoric.
The Polish Revolution cast off the Russian hegemony that had kept the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth impotent for most of the eighteenth century. Before being overthrown by the armies of Catherine the Great, the Four Years' Parliament of 1788-92 passed wide-ranging reforms, culminating in Europe's first written constitution on 3 May 1791. In some respects its policies towards the Catholic Church of both rites (Latin and Ruthenian) were more radical than those of Joseph II, and comparable to some of those adopted in the early stages of the French Revolution. Policies included taxation of the Catholic clergy at more than double the rate of the lay nobility, the confiscation of episcopal estate...
This work is an attempt to change thinking not only on the political practice and the role of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in a European context (both East and West), but to also connect the early modern past with present notions of citizenship and participatory political systems.
Now into its fifth edition, Lithuania is an invaluable guide for planning a memorable vacation in this most hospitable of European countries.
Das Großfürstentum Litauen ist in der westlichen Forschung bisher kaum beachtet worden. Dabei bildete es einen eigenen, mit Polen verbundenen Reichsverband, der durch mehrsprachige, multikonfessionelle und multikulturelle Milieus gekennzeichnet war. Als Folge sprachlicher, nationaler und konfessioneller Angleichungsprozesse erfuhren jene Verhältnisse zwischen 1500 und 1795 einen tiefgreifenden Wandel. Litauen bietet damit ein faszinierendes Beispiel für die vergleichende Analyse von frühmodernen Imperien. Mathias Niendorf verarbeitet souverän die nur schwer zugänglichen Arbeiten in u. a. litauischer, weißrussischer, polnischer und russischer Sprache. Berücksichtigt werden auch relig...
This monograph serves as an introduction to the art, architecture and literary culture of the Eastern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th and 17th centuries. The geographical area under discussion comprises the regions of contemporary Lithuania, western Belarus and western Ukraine. The introduction of the Renaissance and Baroque classical revival into these lands is considered here within the political context of nationalistic and religious loyalties, as well as economic status and class. The central discussion focuses on the issue of national identity and religious loyalty in the inter-relation between the Byzantine inheritance of the Lithuanian and Ruthenian populace and the Poloniz...