Kategoria BISAC: History >> Eastern Europe - General

Romania has a larger Gypsy population than most other countries but little is known about the relationship between this group and the non-Gypsy Romanians around them. This book focuses on a group of Rom Gypsies living in a village in Transylvania and explores their social life and cosmology. Because Rom Gypsies are dependent on and define themselves in relation to the surrounding non-Gypsy populations, it is important to understand their day-to-day interactions with these neighbors, primarily peasants to whom they relate through extended barter. The author comes to the conclusion that,...

The seventh Europe volume of Constitutions of the World covers Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands; a central European region in which constitutional echoes of the revolutions of 1789, 1830 and 1848, the restoration following the Congress of Vienna and the national independence movements can be found. The scope of the edited source material reaches from the 1789 "Liege declaration on human rights" and the "Declaratie van de Rechten van de Mens en Burger van Holland" from 1795 to the constitutional documents of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (1815- 1830/39) and the Kingdom of...

"Conceptually very rich and broad . . . Will outlive the continuous changes that are taking place in the territory of the former Soviet Union."--A. Reza Sheikholeslami, Oriental Institute, St. Antony's College, Oxford University

"A multidisciplinary as well as a multicultural approach to the study of Central Asia. . . . An informative account of history, politics, religions, and the social complexities of the Central Asian societies."--Manochehr Dorraj, Texas Christian University

Leading Western, Russian, and Central Asian scholars examine here the domestic and...

The memory of the Shoah remains a contentious issue in Poland to this day. Since the mid-1980s, public discourse has repeatedly focussed on the issue of how to deal with the National Socialists' destruction of the Jews. This has raised accusations that the Polish people bore an element of moral or active guilt during World War Two which, however, conflict with the country's long-established perception of itself as a community of heroes and victims. The author examines the question of how Polish society is handling this contradiction and what effect the discussions have on the opinions...

Different religious groups in Central and Eastern Europe influenced societies in the region after the fall of Communism and continue to play a crucial role in culture, politics, social networks and value transformations. As part of the REVACERN (Religion and Values in Central and Eastern Europe Research Network) project supported by the EU Sixth Framework Program more than 70 researchers from 15 countries in the region analyzed and discussed the most important trends in values, religions and religious communities and presented their findings in a comparative way. They tested well-known...

Until the end of World War II, East Prussia was the German empire's farthest eastern redoubt, a thriving and beautiful land on the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea. Now it lives only in history and in myth. Since 1945, the territory has been divided between Poland and Russia, stretching from the border between Russia and Lithuania in the east and south, and through Poland in the west. In Forgotten Land, Max Egremont offers a vivid account of this region and its people through the stories of individuals who were intimately involved in and transformed by its tumultuous...

Performance art in the West has developed in part as a response to the commercialization of the art object. But what are the roots of performance art in Eastern Europe and Russia, where there was no real art market to speak of? While Western performance artists of the late 20th century aimed to create works that could not be bought or sold, performances in the communist bloc in the absence of an art market, more often took the form of social critique. Instead of creations that questioned what the art object is, their work often related to local issues within the context of late- or...