Kategoria BISAC: History >> Eastern Europe - General

As the largest and most strategically important country in Central-Eastern Europe, Poland's transformation from socialism to capitalism has brought with it immense political changes. Poland was the first Eastern European country to return to capitalism, with its shock-therapy economic reforms replicated throughout the region. Here Gavin Rae analyses the changes to the country since 1989 in their historical and geo-political framework. He looks at both how the absorption of Poland into the international capitalist system has transformed the country and how this process is contributing to...

The history of Albania includes some memorable characters - from the legendary Albanian hero Scanderbeg to the glamorous Queen Geraldine. Robert Elsie's extensively researched Biographical Dictionary of Albania History provides fascinating and comprehensible information on over 700 Albanian and Albania-related historical figures, from ancient times, via the centuries of Ottoman rule to the end of the twentieth century. All notable historical and political figures - from the Kings of Illyria to Enver Hoxha - are included as well as leading figures of culture and the arts - from Marin...

Facing off against Byzantines, Arabs, Vikings, Turks, Mongols, and Russians, this steppe culture dominated Black Sea and Caucasus trade during Medieval times.

The Bulgars were a Turkic people who established a state north of the Black Sea, and who showed similarities with the Alans and Sarmatians. In the late 500s and early 600s AD their state fragmented under pressure from the Khazars; one group moved south into what became Bulgaria, but the rest moved north during the 7th and 8th centuries to the basin of the Volga river. There they remained under Khazar domination until the Khazar...

In the troubled island of Cyprus, the national interests and rivalries of Greece and Turkey still collide, the population remains divided between the Greek and Turkish communities and the country is still a cat's paw of outside powers--especially the USA and the now resurgent Russia--as it has been since the acquisition of the island by Britain in 1878. These are problems that have been brought into sharp focus by Cyprus's entry into the European Union.

William Mallinson's book is a fast-moving and incisive narrative history which portrays Cyprus as a continuing source of...

The history of Eastern Europe during the Cold War is one punctuated by protest and rebellion. Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe covers these flashpoints from the Stalin-Tito split of 1948 to the dramatic collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989.Covering East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland and Romania, the authors provide comprehensive critical analysis of the varying forms of dissent in the East European socialist states. They take a comparative approach and show how the different movements affected one another. Incorporating archival material only accessible...

During the four decades of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia a vast literature on working-class movements has been produced but it has hardly any value for today's scholarship. This remarkable study reopens the field. Based on Czech, Slovak, German and other sources, it focuses on the history of the multi-ethnic social democratic labor movement in Slovakia's capital Bratislava during the period 1867-1921, and on the process of national revolution during the years 1918-19 in particular. The study places the historic change of the former Pressburg into the modern Bratislava in the...

The grand narrative of The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building is that of the essential continuity of the late Ottoman Empire with the Republic of Turkey that was founded in 1923. Erik Jan Zurcher shows that Kemal's ""ideological toolkit,"" which included positivism, militarism, nationalism and a state-centred world view, was shared by many other Young Turks. Authoritarian rule, a one-party state, a legal framework based on European principles, advanced European-style bureaucracy, financial administration, military and educational reforms and state-control of Islam, can all be...

The Armenian Genocide was one of the greatest atrocities of the twentieth century, an episode in which up to 1.5 million Armenians lost their lives. In this major new history, the renowned historian Raymond Kevorkian provides an authoritative account of the origins, events and consequences of the years 1915 and 1916. He considers the role that the Armenian Genocide played in the construction of the Turkish nation state and Turkish identity, as well as exploring the ideologies of power, rule and state violence. Crucially, he examines the consequences of the violence against the Armenians,...