The authority of Polish communists in 1944-1945 was usurpatory; it was not given to them by the Polish people. Nor was the power they held the result of their own actions; they were installed as the country's rulers by the Soviet army. Yet Polish Communists set out to produce credible claims to authority and legitimacy for their power by reshaping the nation's culture and traditions.
Jan Kubik begins his study by demonstrating how the strategy for remodeling the national culture was implemented through extensive use of public ceremonies and displays of symbols by the Gierek regime...
The authority of Polish communists in 1944-1945 was usurpatory; it was not given to them by the Polish people. Nor was the power they held the resu...
Poland is the only country in which popular protest and mass opposition, epitomized by the Solidarity movement, played a significant role in bringing down the communist regime. This book, the first comprehensive study of the politics of protest in postcommunist Central Europe, shows that organized protests not only continued under the new regime but also had a powerful impact on Poland's democratic consolidation. Following the collapse of communism in 1989, the countries of Eastern Europe embarked on the gargantuan project of restructuring their social, political, economic, and cultural...
Poland is the only country in which popular protest and mass opposition, epitomized by the Solidarity movement, played a significant role in bringing ...
While the fall of the Berlin Wall is positively commemorated in the West, the intervening years have shown that the former Soviet Bloc has a more complicated view of its legacy. In post-communist Eastern Europe, the way people remember state socialism is closely intertwined with the manner in which they envision historical justice. Twenty Years After Communism is concerned with the explosion of a politics of memory triggered by the fall of state socialism in Eastern Europe, and it takes a comparative look at the ways that communism and its demise have been commemorated (or not...
While the fall of the Berlin Wall is positively commemorated in the West, the intervening years have shown that the former Soviet Bloc has a more comp...
While the fall of the Berlin Wall is positively commemorated in the West, the intervening years have shown that the former Soviet Bloc has a more complicated view of its legacy. In post-communist Eastern Europe, the way people remember state socialism is closely intertwined with the manner in which they envision historical justice. Twenty Years After Communism is concerned with the explosion of a politics of memory triggered by the fall of state socialism in Eastern Europe, and it takes a comparative look at the ways that communism and its demise have been commemorated (or not...
While the fall of the Berlin Wall is positively commemorated in the West, the intervening years have shown that the former Soviet Bloc has a more comp...
