Overthrowing communism in 1989 and joining the European Union in 2004, the Polish people hold loyalties to region, country and now continent even as the definition of what it means to be European remains unclear. This book uses the life-story narratives of rural and urban southern Poles to reveal how being European is considered a fundamental component of being Polish while participants are simultaneously becoming European .

Close attention to the individual lives of Poles allows the author to identify cultural patterns and grasp the impact of the EU on its member states, paying...

Located at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula, Bulgaria serves as a natural stepping stone to the Straits, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. Its geo-strategic position has frequently attracted foreign powers including Great Britain and the Soviet Union with an array of regional and global interests. NP] A succession of Great Power influences in the Balkans both shaped Bulgaria s international place and marked its domestic policy. This book explores Britain s involvement in Bulgaria between 1943 and 1949, providing a new understanding of the origins of the Cold War in the...

This volume brings together articles written by experts in the literary history of Central and Eastern European literatures. The overarching topic is the export of Socialist Realism into Europe after WWII, but the authors are interested not so much in highlighting the generalised, top-down mechanism of the project, as in the particularities of each specific national and cultural context. Research shows that in practice the introduction of the Soviet cultural model was not quite the smooth endeavour that it was intended to be; rather, it was always a work in progress, often born out of a...