Medical doctors driving taxis, architects selling beer on street corners, scientific institutes closed down amid rusting carcasses of industrial plants—these images became common at the turn of the 21st century in many once modern “civilized” countries. In quite a few of them, long-time neighbours came to kill each other, apparently motivated by the newly discovered differences of religion, language, or origin. Civil nationalism gave way to tribal, ethnic, and confessional conflict. Ration...

The East European nations’ common past in the Soviet Union connects them in terms of both their political histories and the evolution of their philosophical thought. The USSR’s dissolution created new opportunities, domestic and international, in science, politics, and business. De-Sovietization meant for philosophy that it lost its former significance as a political-ideological tool of the authorities, and its previous role in society. Philosophers of the former Soviet bloc now found them...

The recent history of post-Soviet societies is heavily shaped by the successor nations’ efforts to geopolitically re-identify themselves and to reify certain majorities in them. As a result of these fascinating processes, various new ideologies have appeared. Some are specific to the post-Soviet space while others are comparable to ideational processes in other parts of the world. In this collected volume, an international group of contributors delves deeper into recent theoretical constru...

The USSR’s dissolution resulted in the creation of not only fifteen recognized states but also of four non-recognized statelets: Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Transnistria. Their polities comprise networks with state-like elements. Since the early 1990s, the four pseudo-states have been continously dependent on their sponsor countries (Russia, Armenia), and contesting the territorial integrity of their parental nation-states Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova. In 2014, the o...

The Euromaidan protests highlighted Ukraine as a state between East and West European pathways. It became obvious that Ukraine’s search for identity and future is deeply rooted in historical fragmentations of the country which indicate Ukraine’s long-standing and multiple ties beyond its borders. In this volume, distinguished scholars provide empirical analysis and theoretical reflections on Ukraine’s transnational embeddedness which surfaced with an unexpected intensity in the recent poli...

This book dissects—from both philosophical and empirical viewpoints—the peculiar developmental challenges, geopolitical contexts, and dystopic stalemates that post-Soviet societies face during their transition to new political and cultural orders. The principal geographical focus of the essays is Ukraine, but most of the assembled texts are also relevant and/or refer to other post-Soviet countries. Mikhail Minakov describes how former Soviet nations are trying to re-invent, for their parti...

This book is unique in its kind. It is the first scholarly work to attempt a comprehensive and fairly detailed look into the lingering legacies of the communist totalitarian modes of thought and expression in the new discourse forms of the post-totalitarian era. The book gives also new and interesting insights into the ways the new, presumably democratically-minded political elites in post-totalitarian Eastern Europe, Russia, and China manipulate language to serve their own political and e...

“[An] extraordinary book.”—Brian Eno • “One of the best books about the U.S.S.R. in its late stage.”—Alexei Navalny, from Patriot: A Memoir • “Not just history, but a pleasure to read, a true work of art.”—Slavoj Žižek • “Extraordinary and brilliant.”—Adam Curtis, director of HyperNormalisationA fascinating exploration of “hypernormalization” in a political system that seemed powerful and eternal—even when it was on the verge of collapse

Why do some violent conflicts endure across the centuries while others become dimly remembered ancient struggles among forgotten peoples? Is nationalism really the powerful force that it appeared to be in the 1990s? This wide-ranging work examines the conceptual intersection of nationalist ideology social violence and the political transformation of Europe and Eurasia over the last two decades. The end of communism seemed to usher in a period of radical change-an era of "extreme politics" ...

Beyond the Little Red Book: China's revolutionary leader and his philosophyIn this collection of essays, China's Chairman Mao Tse-Tung explains the interpretation of Marxism-Leninism ideology that became known as Maoism. This philosophy fueled the Chinese Revolution and the massive social and economic changes Mao instituted as the nation's leader. From examining the way contradictions can cause great shifts within a society, to the necessity of guerilla-based revol...

Sixteen essays "apply the intersectional theory in an inspiring way in the analysis of gender issues in the past and in contemporary Czech society" ( Aspasia).In this wide-ranging study of women's and gender issues in the pre- and post-1989 Czech Republic, contributors engage with current feminist debates and theories of nation and identity to examine the historical and cultural transformations of Czech feminism. This collection of essays by leading scholar...

Using a human rights approach, the book analyses the dynamics in the application of minority policies for the preservation of cultural and linguistic diversity in Russia. Despite Russia’s legacy of ethno-cultural and linguistic pluralism, the book argues that the Putin leadership’s overwhelming statism and promotion of Russian patriotism are inexorably leading to a reduction of Russia’s diversity. Using scores of interviews with representatives of national minorities, civil society, public...