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"Social change Europe, Eastern History 20th century."
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In the name of the great work
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.
eBook
Races to modernity : metropolitan aspirations in Eastern Europe, 1890-1940
\"The book asks how far the model of the European City can be applied to the cities of Eastern Europe which massively expanded from the second half of the 19th century on but often lacked some of the fundamentals of the European urbanity in the Weberian sense. The authors employ a broad focus and look at metropolitan cities between Helsinki and Athens, Warsaw and Moscow. The period under investigation begins with the 1890s when East European societies entered an 'age of great acceleration' and stops with the outbreak of World War II which not only destroyed but also socially and ethnically altered many metropolitan cities of Eastern Europe. While before the First World War most of Eastern Europe was subsumed in the Habsburg, Romanov, and Ottoman empires, new (nation-) states and socialist ideologies shaped post-1918 urban development. For the majority of the new capitals created by the post-war order the state remained the main proponent of change. Both, historical preconditions--the economic situation, the legacy of the empires--and the experience of the upheaval of 1917/18 contributed to this particularity of the region. On the other hand Western Europe and her urban experts continued to be and became even stronger points of reference. The volume discusses the peculiar relationship between state, city and the challenges of modernity in the Eastern Europe with a focus on urban planning in the wider sense of the word. In particular, the different chapters of the book ask how far--given the omnipresent, albeit often idealized example of Western metropolitan cities--a 'reflective modernization' may be identified as a common marker of cities in the region under observation\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Legacies of Violence
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
eBook
Reinstating the Ottomans : alternative Balkan modernities, 1800-1912
\"This book is inspired by recent scholarship that reexamines the dramatic changes affecting heterogeneous societies in late nineteenth century empires. It expands the analysis of transformation beyond conventional methods of studying failed empires--the emergence of ethnonationalism, sharpened class/gendered sectarian differences--and restates the need to guard against unnecessary anachronisms that have infused post-World War I state-centric historiography. The issues specific to the western Balkans constituted in 1820-1912 a confluence of autonomous, ever-shifting polities that constantly interacted with each other and the larger world in varying degrees through the filter of an Ottoman administration. Unlike other areas of southeastern Europe or the Mediterranean, though, the western Balkans in much of the last quarter of the nineteenth century were characterized by a unique administrative, cultural, and economic setting that led to a distinctive regional experience of modernity. This is partly why it would take the many competing interests in the post-Ottoman years to finally establish respective administrative regimes; this \"delayed\" incorporation into the nation state left most of the regions inhabitants in a kind of developmental black hole with respect to ethnonational and sectarian claims\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Restless History
Post-Stalinism - the last three decades of socialism in the
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe - gave birth to new political ideas
and social struggles, which reshaped socialist societies and forged
new global imaginaries. With a focus on socialist Bulgaria,
Restless History traces the dynamic polemical and social
shifts that took place during this period. With anti-Stalinist and
humanist visions, socialist societies rebuilt their material and
social worlds around social-reproductive needs such as care,
housing, education, leisure, rest, and access to culture and the
arts. In the sphere of global politics, they created anti-racist,
feminist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperialist solidarities that
challenged Western hegemony and reordered the global geographies of
power. Yet the changes of the period also took some troubling
directions: humanist imaginaries of socialist progress, modernity,
and nationhood welcomed ideas of national and social homogeneity,
opening the doors to ethnonationalism. Following the promising as
well as troubling moments in the history of Bulgarian
post-Stalinism, Zhivka Valiavicharska brings to life the
complexities of real lived socialism. Restless History
re-examines the post-Stalinist period in Bulgaria, Eastern Europe,
and beyond - in all its tensions and contradictions - to offer the
socialist past as an unfinished history, one that cannot be easily
put to rest.
eBook
Berlin calling : a story of anarchy, music, the Wall, and the birth of the new Berlin
An \"account of the 1989 'peaceful revolution' in East Germany that upended communism and the tumultuous years of artistic ferment, political improvisation, and pirate utopias that followed. It's the story of a newly undivided Berlin when protest and punk rock, bohemia and direct democracy, techno and free theater were the order of the day. In a story stocked with ... characters from Berlin's highly politicized undergrounds--including playwright Heiner Muller, cult figure Blixa Bargeld, ... the ... French Wall artist Thierry Noir, the American multimedia artist Danielle de Picciotto, ... and David Bowie during his Ziggy Stardust incarnation--Hockenos argues that the DIY energy and raw urban vibe of the early 1990s shaped the new Berlin and still pulses through the city today\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Uprooted
With the stroke of a pen at the Potsdam Conference following the Allied victory in 1945, Breslau, the largest German city east of Berlin, became the Polish city of Wroclaw. Its more than six hundred thousand inhabitants--almost all of them ethnic Germans--were expelled and replaced by Polish settlers from all parts of prewar Poland.Uprootedexamines the long-term psychological and cultural consequences of forced migration in twentieth-century Europe through the experiences of Wroclaw's Polish inhabitants.
In this pioneering work, Gregor Thum tells the story of how the city's new Polish settlers found themselves in a place that was not only unfamiliar to them but outright repellent given Wroclaw's Prussian-German appearance and the enormous scope of wartime destruction. The immediate consequences were an unstable society, an extremely high crime rate, rapid dilapidation of the building stock, and economic stagnation. This changed only after the city's authorities and a new intellectual elite provided Wroclaw with a Polish founding myth and reshaped the city's appearance to fit the postwar legend that it was an age-old Polish city. Thum also shows how the end of the Cold War and Poland's democratization triggered a public debate about Wroclaw's \"amputated memory.\" Rediscovering the German past, Wroclaw's Poles reinvented their city for the second time since World War II.
Uprootedtraces the complex historical process by which Wroclaw's new inhabitants revitalized their city and made it their own.
eBook
Austerities and Aspirations
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.
eBook
The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia
The Buryats are a Mongolian population in Siberian Russia, the largest indigenous minority. The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia presents the dramatic transformation in their everyday lives during the late twentieth century. The book challenges the common notion that the process of modernization during the later Soviet period created a Buryat national assertiveness rather than assimilation or support for the state.
eBook