Kategoria BISAC: History >> Eastern Europe - General

How did the fall of communism and the subsequent transition to capitalism in Eastern Europe affect the people who experienced it? And how did their anger affect the quality of the democratic systems that have emerged? Poland offers a particularly provocative case, for it was here where workers most famously seemed to have won, thanks to the role of the Solidarity trade union. And yet, within a few short years, they had clearly lost. An oppressive communist regime gave way to a capitalist society that embraced economic and political inequality, leaving many workers frustrated and angry....

In most countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the fall of communism opened up the possibility for individuals to acquire land. Based on Katherine Verdery's extensive fieldwork between 1990 and 2001, The Vanishing Hectare explores the importance of land and land ownership to the people of one Transylvanian community, Aurel Vlaicu. Verdery traces how collectivized land was transformed into private property, how land was valued, what the new owners were able to do with it, and what it signified to each of the different groups vying for land rights.

Verdery...

From the Middle Ages until World War II, Poland was host to Europe's largest and most vibrant Jewish population. By 1970, the combination of Nazi genocide, postwar pogroms, mass emigration, and communist repression had virtually destroyed Poland's Jewish community. Although the Poles themselves were subjected to enormous cruelties in the twentieth century, questions about the extent of their antisemitism and its role in the fate of Polish Jewry are today hotly disputed.

Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland serves as an effective guide to some of the most complex...

Even before it collapsed into civil war, ethnic cleansing, and dissolution, Yugoslavia was an archetypical example of a troubled multinational mosaic, a state without a single national base or even a majority. Its stability and very existence were challenged repeatedly by the tension between the pressures for overarching political cohesion and the defense of separate national identities and aspirations.

In a brilliant analysis of this complex and sensitive national question, Ivo Banac provides a comprehensive introduction to Yugoslav political history. His book is a genetic study of...

The Carpatho-Rusyns are central European people, numbering approximately 1.2 million, who live within the borders of five states: Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, and Hungary. They have never had a state of their own. Disregarded and suppressed by most governments that ruled over them in the past, the Rusyn people have had to fight to retain their identity, culture, and language. This work is an attempt to redress the loss of historical memory and knowledge caused by decades of repression by investigating and explaining the historical past and culture of Rusyns in all countries where...

Habsburg Galicia was an area in central Europe covering territory presently occupied by Poland and Ukraine that was distinctive for its multi-ethnic character. With the unraveling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire following the First World War, a new political map of Europe emerged, one based on the principle of the nation-state. The very concept of the nation-state, however, was problematic in culturally pluralistic regions like Galicia.

The essays in this volume examine Galicia beyond the traditional paradigm of national history, in an effort to better understand the region as a place...

Originally published by Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1966.

Focusing on the middle period in Byzantium's eleven-century history as its most imperial era, Jenkins considers a number of events that changed the course of world history: the repulse of the Saracens from the gates of Constantinople in 678 and 718, the reign of Michael III, which marked the greatness of Middle Byzantium, the resolution in 843 of the quarrel over images, the conversion of the Bulgar Khan Boris to Christianity, and a splendid revival of painting, which culminated in the apse mosaic of St Sophia.

In April 1945, the sisters are transported to Bergen-Belsen, two months before liberation. Upon liberation, Hedi renews her acquaintance with Michael, another survivor...

This book studies the nature of Venetian rule over the Slavs of Dalmatia during the eighteenth century, focusing on the cultural elaboration of an ideology of empire that was based on a civilizing mission toward the Slavs. The book argues that the Enlightenment within the "Adriatic Empire" of Venice was deeply concerned with exploring the economic and social dimensions of backwardness in Dalmatia, in accordance with the evolving distinction between "Western Europe" and "Eastern Europe" across the continent. It further argues that the primitivism attributed to Dalmatians by the Venetian...

"The definitive account of the organized destruction of the Ottoman Armenians . . . No future discussion of the history will be able to ignore this brilliant book."--Orhan Pamuk

Beginning in 1915, under the cover of a world war, some one million Armenians were killed through starvation, forced marches, and mass acts of slaughter. Although Armenians and the judgment of history have long held the Ottoman powers responsible for genocide, modern Turkey has rejected any such claim.

Now, in a pioneering work of excavation, Turkish historian Taner Akcam has made unprecedented...