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Eastern Europe has become an ideological battleground since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with liberals and authoritarians struggling to seize the ground lost by Marxism. InFantasies of Salvation, Vladimir Tismaneanu traces the intellectual history of this struggle and warns that authoritarian nationalists pose a serious threat to democratic forces. A leading observer of the often baffling world of post-Communist Europe, Tismaneanu shows that extreme nationalistic and authoritarian thought has been influential in Eastern Europe for much of this century, while liberalism has only shallow historical roots. Despite democratic successes in places such as the Czech Republic and Poland, he argues, it would be a mistake for the West to assume that liberalism will always triumph. He backs this argument by showing how nationalist intellectuals have encouraged ethnic hatred in such countries as Russia, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia by reviving patriotic myths of heroes, scapegoats, and historical injustices. And he shows how enthusiastically these myths have been welcomed by people desperate for some form of \"salvation\" from political and economic uncertainty. On a theoretical level, Tismaneanu challenges the common ideas that the ideological struggle is between \"right\" and \"left\" or between \"nationalists\" and \"internationalists.\" In a careful analysis of the conflict's ideological roots, he argues that it is more useful and historically accurate to view the struggle as between those who embrace the individualist traditions of the Enlightenment and those who reject them. Tismaneanu himself has been active in the intellectual battles he describes, particularly in his native Romania, and makes insightful use of interviews with key members of the dissident movements of the 1970s and 1980s. He offers original observations of countries from the Baltic to the Black Sea and expresses his ideas in a vivid and forceful style.Fantasies of Salvationis an indispensable book for both academic and nonacademic readers who wish to understand the forces shaping one of the world's most important and unpredictable regions.

Why did Hungary, a country that shared much of the religious and institutional heritage of western Europe, fail to replicate the social and political experiences of the latter in the nineteenth and early twenties centuries? The answer, the author argues, lies not with cultural idiosyncracies or historical accident, but with the internal dynamics of the modern world system that stimulated aspirations not easily realizable within the confines of backward economics in peripheral national states. The author develops his theme by examining a century of Hungarian economic, social, and political history. During the period under consideration, the country witnessed attempts to transplant liberal institutions from the West, the corruption of these institutions into a \"neo-corporatist\" bureaucratic state, and finally, the rise of diverse Left and Right radical movements as much in protest against this institutional corruption as against the prevailing global division of labor and economic inequality. Pointing to significant analogies between the Hungarian past and the plight of the countries of the Third World today, this work should be of interest not only to the specialist on East European politics, but also to students of development, dependency, and center-periphery relations in the contemporary world.

Neighbors--Jan Gross’s stunning account of the brutal mass murder of the Jews of Jedwabne by their Polish neighbors--was met with international critical acclaim and was a finalist for the National Book Award in the United States. It has also been, from the moment of its publication, the occasion of intense controversy and painful reckoning. This book captures some of the most important voices in the ensuing debate, including those of residents of Jedwabne itself as well as those of journalists, intellectuals, politicians, Catholic clergy, and historians both within and well beyond Poland’s borders. Antony Polonsky and Joanna Michlic introduce the debate, focusing particularly on how Neighbors rubbed against difficult old and new issues of Polish social memory and national identity. The editors then present a variety of Polish voices grappling with the role of the massacre and of Polish-Jewish relations in Polish history. They include samples of the various strategies used by Polish intellectuals and political elites as they have attempted to deal with their country’s dark past, to overcome the legacy of the Holocaust, and to respond to Gross’s book.

In the first English-language edition of a general, synthetic history of French Jewry from antiquity to the present, Esther Benbassa tells the intriguing tale of the social, economic, and cultural vicissitudes of a people in diaspora. With verve and insight, she reveals the diversity of Jewish life throughout France's regions, while showing how Jewish identity has constantly redefined itself in a country known for both the Rights of Man and the Dreyfus affair. Beginning with late antiquity, she charts the migrations of Jews into France and traces their fortunes through the making of the French kingdom, the Revolution, the rise of modern anti-Semitism, and the current renewal of interest in Judaism. As early as the fourth century, Jews inhabited Roman Gaul, and by the reign of Charlemagne, some figured prominently at court. The perception of Jewish influence on France's rulers contributed to a clash between church and monarchy that would culminate in the mass expulsion of Jews in the fourteenth century. The book examines the re-entry of small numbers of Jews as New Christians in the Southwest and the emergence of a new French Jewish population with the country's acquisition of Alsace and Lorraine. The saga of modernity comes next, beginning with the French Revolution and the granting of citizenship to French Jews. Detailed yet quick-paced discussions of key episodes follow: progress made toward social and political integration, the shifting social and demographic profiles of Jews in the 1800s, Jewish participation in the economy and the arts, the mass migrations from Eastern Europe at the turn of the twentieth century, the Dreyfus affair, persecution under Vichy, the Holocaust, and the postwar arrival of North African Jews. Reinterpreting such themes as assimilation, acculturation, and pluralism, Benbassa finds that French Jews have integrated successfully without always risking loss of identity. Published to great acclaim in France, this book brings important current issues to bear on the study of Judaism in general, while making for dramatic reading.

The author provocatively but persuasively argues that this campaign was rooted in religious belief, the product of a weaponized interpretation of mainstream Catholic doctrine. Witnessing the slaughter of their coreligionists, Christians increasingly saw the violence less as a bloody referendum on the fate of the Spanish Republic and more so as a \"holy war\" between Christianity and Communism. Moran and his followers continued to sow hatred, contributing, even if indirectly, to a marked rise in violence committed by Catholics against the Jewish community in Boston.

The Russian Civil War pogroms and Ukrainian Hasidism have been extensively researched. Yet little is known about their convergence, that is, the impact of the pogroms on Hasidism and its most popular Ukrainian school, Chernobyl. The following eyewitness testimonies of the 1919-21 pogroms, preserved in the Elias Tscherikower Collection of the YIVO Archives, reveal the experiences of Chernobyl Hasidic leaders, or rebbes (Heb. tzaddikim), and their families during these catastrophic events. They reveal Hasidic rebbes as the primary targets of pogromists; yet record instances of aid and protection from secularist Jewish youth and certain Christian neighbors.

This article focuses on the complex and increasingly strained relationship between Jews and Soviet society in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust. After the traumatic experiences of war and extermination, Soviet Jews hoped for a secure existence and, to some extent, a revival of Jewish life within the Soviet state. The reality, however, was often marked by antisemitism and exclusion, which frequently shaped their everyday lives after 1945. The Soviet regime proved not only incapable but largely unwilling to address the growing hostility toward Jews within the population. Jews developed a strong sense of belonging together as part of a community of destiny and as members of a persecuted people. They hoped for the regime's support in rebuilding Jewish life after the war, however the Stalinist regime, on the contrary, pursued a policy of concealing the Holocaust, particularly regarding the involvement of Soviet citizens in anti-Jewish crimes. Furthermore, it actively suppressed efforts to reconstruct Jewish social and cultural life in the Soviet Union. From the regime's perspective, acknowledging the Jewish tragedy undermined the promoted narrative of the Soviet peoples' unity and the heroic victory over fascist Germany, posing a \"threat\" to the imposed social consensus dictated by the party and state leadership. Foreign policy factors after 1945 further complicated the situation. The difficult relationship between Soviet Jews and the Soviet state reached a breaking point around 1948-1949 against the backdrop of the onset of the Cold War and the founding of the state of Israel, as Jews were increasingly perceived to be disloyal Soviet citizens, particularly due to their international connections and Jewish solidarity worldwide. At this point, the Stalinist regime began to view Jews as \"agents of the West\" and Zionists, persecuting them as enemies of the Soviet people.

Two leading political organisations in interwar Romania were genuinely anti-Semitic: the fascist Legionary movement and the far-right party the National Christian Defence League (LANC), known from 1935 as the National Christian Party (PNC). Whereas the anti-Semitism of the Legionaries is well researched, that of the LANC/PNC has rarely been studied. I argue that, in addition to an anti-Semitic agenda and rhetoric, anti-Jewish violence was an inherent part of the political practices of the LANC/PNC. I analyse the party's national congress on 8 November 1936, when thousands of supporters gathered in Bucharest, and use party correspondence and police and Interior Ministry records to show that the attendees engaged extensively in anti-Jewish violence, before and even more so after the congress. The government, ruled by the National Liberal Party, agreed to the mass anti-Semitic gathering but had only a vague plan to repress violent anti-Semitism: expecting the event to stir up anti-Jewish hatred, the Interior Ministry mobilised the security forces to prevent outbursts during the congress, but not much before or after. The LANC/PNC played a central role in the politicisation of extreme anti-Semitism in interwar Romania, and addressing the party's history provides a better understanding of the right-wing radicalisation of the time.

This article delves into the poetry of Sore Kahan (1885–1941), a Jewish writer from Belarus who wrote in Yiddish. Her poems reflect a pivotal period in the development of Soviet Yiddish culture, and this article presents the way in which Kahan's writing intersects with the social changes brought by the consolidation of Bolshevik power in 1917. It investigates the role of women writers in secular Jewish culture in the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, spotlighting their contributions. It explores how Yiddish served as a tool for expressing the Soviet state's objectives, while also delving into the historical context portrayed in Kahan's poetry. Through literary analysis, it uncovers the meanings and values within these poems, analyzing their alignment with and deviation from the state's demands.