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In studies of a common European past, there is a significant lack of scholarship on the former Eastern Bloc countries. While understanding the importance of shifting the focus of European memory eastward, contributors to this volume avoid the trap of Eastern European exceptionalism, an assumption that this region's experiences are too unique to render them comparable to the rest of Europe. They offer a reflection on memory from an Eastern European historical perspective, one that can be measured against, or applied to, historical experience in other parts of Europe. In this way, the authors situate studies on memory in Eastern Europe within the broader debate on European memory.

During much of the Cold War, physical escape from countries in the East Bloc was a near impossible act. There remained, however, possibilities for other socialist escapes, particularly time away from party ideology and the mundane routines of everyday life. The essays in this volume examine sites of socialist escapes, such as beaches, camp sites, nightclubs, concerts, castles, cars, and soccer matches. The chapters explore the effectiveness of state efforts to engineer society through leisure, entertainment, and related forms of cultural programming and consumption, as it was in leisure and tourism that the party's intentions encountered Eigen-Sinn, the pursuit of individual interests. This volume leads to a deeper understanding of state- society relations in the East Bloc, where the state did not simply \"dictate from above\" and inhabitants had some opportunities to shape solidarities, identities, and meaning.

Property is a complex phenomenon comprising cultural, social, and legal rules. During the twentieth century, property rights in land suffered massive interference in Central and Eastern Europe. The promise of universal and formally equal rights of land ownership, ensuring predictability of social processes and individual autonomy, was largely not fulfilled. The national appropriation of property in the interwar period and the communist era represent an onerous legacy for the postcommunist (re)construction of a liberal-individualist property regime. However, as the scholars in this collection show, after the demise of communism in Eastern Europe property is again a major factor in shaping individual identity and in providing the political order and culture with a foundational institution. This volume analyzes both historical and contemporary forms of land ownership in Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia in a multidisciplinary framework including economic history, legal and political studies, and social anthropology.

Beginning in 1948, the Soviet Union launched a series of wildly ambitious projects to implement Joseph Stalin's vision of a total \"transformation of nature.\" Intended to increase agricultural yields dramatically, this utopian impulse quickly spread to the newly communist states of Eastern Europe, captivating political elites and war-fatigued publics alike. By the time of Stalin's death, however, these attempts at \"transformation\"-which relied upon ideologically corrupted and pseudoscientific theories-had proven a spectacular failure. This richly detailed volume follows the history of such projects in three communist states-Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia-and explores their varied, but largely disastrous, consequences.

This monograph provides an analysis of the economic performance and living standard in Czechoslovakia and its successor states, Hungary, and Poland since 1945. The novelty of the book lies in its broad comparative perspective: it places East Central Europe in a wider European framework that underlines the themes of regional disparities and European commonalities. Going beyond the traditional growth paradigm, the author systematically studies the historical patterns of consumption, leisure, and quality of life-aspects that Tomka argues can best be considered in relation to one other. By adopting this \"triple approach,\" he undertakes a truly interdisciplinary research drawing from history, economics, sociology, and demography. As a result of Tomka's three-pillar comparative analysis, the book makes a major contribution to the debates on the dynamics of economic growth in communist and postcommunist East Central Europe, on the socialist consumer culture along with its transformation after 1990, and on how the accounts on East Central Europe can be integrated into the emerging field of historical quality of life research.

In many ways what is identified today as \"cultural globalization\" in Eastern Europe has its roots in the Cold War phenomena ofsamizdat(\"do-it-yourself\" underground publishing) andtamizdat(publishing abroad). This volume offers a new understanding of how information flowed between East and West during the Cold War, as well as the much broader circulation of cultural products instigated and sustained by these practices. By expanding the definitions ofsamizdatandtamizdatfrom explicitly political, print publications to include other forms and genres, this volume investigates the wider cultural sphere of alternative and semi-official texts, broadcast media, reproductions of visual art and music, and, in the post-1989 period, new media. The underground circulation of uncensored texts in the Cold War era serves as a useful foundation for comparison when looking at current examples of censorship, independent media and the use of new media in countries like China, Iran, and the former Yugoslavia.

This book explores the influence of Young Europe - an international alliance founded by Giuseppe Mazzini in 1834 - on the Polish, Slovak, Czech, and Ukrainian intelligentsia in the first half of the nineteenth century.

The First World War began in the Balkans, and it was fought as fiercely in the East as it was in the West. Fighting persisted in the East for almost a decade, radically transforming the political and social order of the entire continent. The specifics of the Eastern war such as mass deportations, ethnic cleansing, and the radicalization of military, paramilitary and revolutionary violence have only recently become the focus of historical research. This volume situates the 'Long First World War' on the Eastern Front (1912–1923) in the hundred years from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century and explores the legacies of violence within this context. Content Jochen Böhler/W?odzimierz Borodziej/Joachim von Puttkamer: Introduction I. A World in Transition Joachim von Puttkamer: Collapse and Restoration. Politics and the Strains of War in Eastern Europe Mark Biondich: Eastern Borderlands and Prospective Shatter Zones. Identity and Conflict in East Central and Southeastern Europe on the Eve of the First World War Jochen Böhler: Generals and Warlords, Revolutionaries and Nation-State Builders. The First World War and its Aftermath in Central and Eastern Europe II. Occupation Jonathan E. Gumz: Losing Control. The Norm of Occupation in Eastern Europe during the First World War Stephan Lehnstaedt: Fluctuating between 'Utilisation' and Exploitation. Occupied East Central Europe during the First World War Robert L. Nelson: Utopias of Open Space. Forced Population Transfer Fantasies during the First World War III. Radicalization Maciej Górny: War on Paper? Physical Anthropology in the Service of States and Nations Piotr J. Wróbel: Foreshadowing the Holocaust. The Wars of 1914–1921 and Anti-Jewish Violence in Central and Eastern Europe Robert Gerwarth: Fighting the Red Beast. Counter-Revolutionary Violence in the Defeated States of Central Europe IV. Aftermath Julia Eichenberg: Consent, Coercion and Endurance in Eastern Europe. Poland and the Fluidity of War Experiences Philipp Ther: Pre-negotiated Violence. Ethnic Cleansing in the 'Long' First World War Dietrich Beyrau: The Long Shadow of the Revolution. Violence in War and Peace in the Soviet Union Commentary Jörn Leonhard: Legacies of Violence: Eastern Europe's First World War – A Commentary from a Comparative Perspective

In 1756, Jacob Frank, an Ottoman Jew who had returned to the Poland of his birth, was discovered leading a group of fellow travelers in a suspect religious service. At the request of the local rabbis, Polish authorities arrested the participants. Jewish authorities contacted the bishop in whose diocese the service had taken place and argued that since the rites of Frank's followers involved the practice of magic and immoral conduct, both Jews and Christians should condemn them and burn them at the stake. The scheme backfired, as the Frankists took the opportunity to ally themselves with the Church, presenting themselves as Contra-Talmudists who believed in a triune God. As a Turkish subject, Frank was released and temporarily expelled to the Ottoman territories, but the others were found guilty of breaking numerous halakhic prohibitions and were subject to a Jewish ban of excommunication. While they professed their adherence to everything that was commanded by God in the Old Testament, they asserted as well that the Rabbis of old had introduced innumerable lies and misconstructions in their interpretations of that holy book.Who were Jacob Frank and his followers? To most Christians, they seemed to be members of a Jewish sect; to Jewish reformers, they formed a group making a valiant if misguided attempt to bring an end to the power of the rabbis; and to more traditional Jews, they were heretics to be suppressed by the rabbinate. What is undeniable is that by the late eighteenth century, the Frankists numbered in the tens of thousands and had a significant political and ideological influence on non-Jewish communities throughout eastern and central Europe.Based on extensive archival research in Poland, the Czech Republic, Israel, Germany, the United States, and the Vatican, The Mixed Multitude is the first comprehensive study of Frank and Frankism in more than a century and offers an important new perspective on Jewish-Christian relations in the Age of Enlightenment.

Thinking through Transition is the first concentrated effort to explore the most recent chapter of East Central European past from the perspective of intellectual history. Post-socialism can be understood as a period of scarcity and preponderance of ideas, the dramatic eclipsing of the dissident legacy (as well as the older political traditions), and the rise of technocratic and post-political governance. This book, grounded in empirical research sensitive to local contexts, proposes instead a history of adaptations, entanglements, and unintended consequences. In order to enable and invite comparison, the volume is structured around major domains of political thought, some of them generic (liberalism, conservatism, the Left), others (populism and politics of history) deemed typical for post-socialism. However, as shown by the authors, the generic often turns out to be heavily dependent on its immediate setting, and the typical resonates with processes that are anything but vernacular.