With the collapse of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance in 1991, the Eastern European nations of the former socialist bloc had to figure out their newly capitalist future. Capitalism, they found, was not a single set of political-economic relations. Rather, they each had to decide what sort of capitalist nation to become. In Capitalist Diversity on Europe's Periphery, Dorothee Bohle and Béla Geskovits trace the form that capitalism took in each country, th...

Facing the Nazi Past examines how the communist East viewed the events of these years very differently from West Germany during the Cold War. Following the unification of Germany, these contrasting memories of the Third Reich have contributed to a new perspective on this period of German history.Facing the Nazi Past explores the developments and debates that were symptomatic of this shift towards a more open confrontation with the past, such as:* the image...

"A masterpiece of historical narrative . . . free from ideological or political bias . . . fill[s] a painful gap in modern English-speaking historiography." —Emilia Hrabovec, University of ViennaThis classic book offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date history of Slovakia, from its establishment on the Danubian Plain to the present. While paying tribute to Slovakia's resilience and struggle for survival, it describes contributions to European civilization in t...

Unlocked Memories is a collection of memories that were shared by Russians who witnessed the German invasion of the Leningrad region in 1941. All were children or young people during World War Two and nearly all were natives of Luga, Oredezh, or villages that were clustered around these two towns. Each lived under German rule after the Leningrad region was overrun and occupied by the enemy.The authors collected these memories over a period of ten years. Many of the memories...

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 Ban...

With the dissolution of the Soviet Empire, it seemed that market capitalism had triumphed and that democracy might replace authoritarian regimes. Economic reformers in the former Eastern Bloc rushed to liberalize prices and transfer state assets to private hands. They assumed that private owners in a market setting would have no choice but to behave rationally_that is, to invest in restructuring privatized enterprises so as to maximize profits. They also assumed that these owners would per...

From Communists to Foreign Capitalists explores the intersections of two momentous changes in the late twentieth century: the fall of Communism and the rise of globalization. Delving into the economic change that accompanied these shifts in central and Eastern Europe, Nina Bandelj presents a pioneering sociological treatment of the process of foreign direct investment (FDI). She demonstrates how both investors and hosts rely on social networks, institutions, politics, and cultural...

Throughout the nineteenth and into the early decades of the twentieth century, it was common for rural and working-class parents in the Czech-German borderlands to ensure that their children were bilingual by sending them to live with families who spoke the "other" language. As nationalism became a more potent force in Central Europe, however, such practices troubled pro-German and pro-Czech activists, who feared that the children born to their nation could literally be "l...

In Politics without a Past Shari J. Cohen offers a powerful challenge tocommon characterizations of postcommunist politics as either a resurgence ofaggressive nationalism or an evolution toward Western-style democracy. Cohendraws upon extensive field research to paint a picture of postcommunistpolitical life in which ideological labels are meaningless and exchangeableat will, political parties appear and disappear regularly, and citizensre...

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain the countries in Central and Eastern Europe has undergone profound transformations. However, in most research on these changes the cultural dimension of transition has been neglected. The analyses have focused on ‘hard’, institutional factors such as legal coordination and economic readjustments, and less attention has been paid to complex dimensions such as lifestyles, habitus, value markers in relation to identity.In Cultural Transformations aft...

The First World War had a devastating impact on the Russian state, yet relatively little is known about the ways in which ordinary Russians experienced and viewed this conflict. Melissa Kirschke Stockdale presents the first comprehensive study of the Great War's influence on Russian notions of national identity and citizenship. Drawing on a vast array of sources, the book examines the patriotic and nationalist organizations which emerged during the war, the role of the Russian Orthodox Chu...