Author: Milada Polišenská
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633860113
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441
Book Description
After the entry of the Red Army into Czechoslovak territory in 1945, Red Army authorities began to arrest and deport Czechoslovak citizens to labor camps in the Soviet Union. The regions most affected were Eastern and South Slovakia and Prague. The Czechoslovak authorities repeatedly requested a halt to the deportations and that the deported Czechoslovaks be returned immediately. It took a long time before these protests generated any response. Czechoslovak Diplomacy and the Gulag focuses on the diplomatic and political aspects of the deportations. The author explains the steps taken by the Czechoslovak Government in the repatriation agenda from 1945 to 1953 and reconstructs the negotiations with the Soviets. The research tries to answer the question of why and how the Russians deported the civilian population from Czechoslovakia which was their allied country already during the war. Key words: 1. World War, 1939–1945—Deportations from Czechoslovakia. 2. Forced labor—Soviet Union—History. 3. Labor camps—Soviet Union—History. 4. Czechs—Soviet Union—History. 5. Slovaks—Soviet Union—History. 6. Czechoslovakia—Foreign relations—Soviet Union. 7. Soviet Union—Foreign relations—Czechoslovakia. 8. Czechoslovakia—Foreign relations—1945–1992. 9. Repatriation—Czechoslovakia—History.
Czechoslovak Diplomacy and the Gulag
Author: Milada Polišenská
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633860113
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441
Book Description
After the entry of the Red Army into Czechoslovak territory in 1945, Red Army authorities began to arrest and deport Czechoslovak citizens to labor camps in the Soviet Union. The regions most affected were Eastern and South Slovakia and Prague. The Czechoslovak authorities repeatedly requested a halt to the deportations and that the deported Czechoslovaks be returned immediately. It took a long time before these protests generated any response. Czechoslovak Diplomacy and the Gulag focuses on the diplomatic and political aspects of the deportations. The author explains the steps taken by the Czechoslovak Government in the repatriation agenda from 1945 to 1953 and reconstructs the negotiations with the Soviets. The research tries to answer the question of why and how the Russians deported the civilian population from Czechoslovakia which was their allied country already during the war. Key words: 1. World War, 1939–1945—Deportations from Czechoslovakia. 2. Forced labor—Soviet Union—History. 3. Labor camps—Soviet Union—History. 4. Czechs—Soviet Union—History. 5. Slovaks—Soviet Union—History. 6. Czechoslovakia—Foreign relations—Soviet Union. 7. Soviet Union—Foreign relations—Czechoslovakia. 8. Czechoslovakia—Foreign relations—1945–1992. 9. Repatriation—Czechoslovakia—History.
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633860113
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441
Book Description
After the entry of the Red Army into Czechoslovak territory in 1945, Red Army authorities began to arrest and deport Czechoslovak citizens to labor camps in the Soviet Union. The regions most affected were Eastern and South Slovakia and Prague. The Czechoslovak authorities repeatedly requested a halt to the deportations and that the deported Czechoslovaks be returned immediately. It took a long time before these protests generated any response. Czechoslovak Diplomacy and the Gulag focuses on the diplomatic and political aspects of the deportations. The author explains the steps taken by the Czechoslovak Government in the repatriation agenda from 1945 to 1953 and reconstructs the negotiations with the Soviets. The research tries to answer the question of why and how the Russians deported the civilian population from Czechoslovakia which was their allied country already during the war. Key words: 1. World War, 1939–1945—Deportations from Czechoslovakia. 2. Forced labor—Soviet Union—History. 3. Labor camps—Soviet Union—History. 4. Czechs—Soviet Union—History. 5. Slovaks—Soviet Union—History. 6. Czechoslovakia—Foreign relations—Soviet Union. 7. Soviet Union—Foreign relations—Czechoslovakia. 8. Czechoslovakia—Foreign relations—1945–1992. 9. Repatriation—Czechoslovakia—History.
The Soviet Gulag
Author: Jeffrey S. Hardy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135012821X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 145
Book Description
A vivid account of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's infamous penal system, this book charts how Bolshevik visions of a humane alternative to Tsarist exile and Western penitentiaries became a chaotic and violent system of mass incarceration that bore a tragic human toll. As the first concise history in the English language, The Soviet Gulag: History and Memory provides an illuminating account of the Gulag from 1917, through to the end of the Soviet Union and the contested memory of the Gulag that persists today. Beginning with their conception, during the various penal experiments of the 1920s, their expansion, during the campaigns against perceived enemies of the Soviet regime in the 1930s, and their decline in the years proceeding Stalin's death, Jeffrey S. Hardy explores how many facets of Gulag life endured right up until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. He addresses both the intentions of administrators and the experience of inmates, as well as covering the main scholarly debates surrounding these issues, Crucially, the book also examines the post-Soviet era. You discover how politicians, nongovernmental organizations, and Gulag survivors have debated how or even if to commemorate the victims of the Gulag. Hardy reveals that despite numerous monuments and museum displays emerging out of these discussions, the Gulag's legacy remains hotly contested in Russia today
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135012821X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 145
Book Description
A vivid account of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's infamous penal system, this book charts how Bolshevik visions of a humane alternative to Tsarist exile and Western penitentiaries became a chaotic and violent system of mass incarceration that bore a tragic human toll. As the first concise history in the English language, The Soviet Gulag: History and Memory provides an illuminating account of the Gulag from 1917, through to the end of the Soviet Union and the contested memory of the Gulag that persists today. Beginning with their conception, during the various penal experiments of the 1920s, their expansion, during the campaigns against perceived enemies of the Soviet regime in the 1930s, and their decline in the years proceeding Stalin's death, Jeffrey S. Hardy explores how many facets of Gulag life endured right up until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. He addresses both the intentions of administrators and the experience of inmates, as well as covering the main scholarly debates surrounding these issues, Crucially, the book also examines the post-Soviet era. You discover how politicians, nongovernmental organizations, and Gulag survivors have debated how or even if to commemorate the victims of the Gulag. Hardy reveals that despite numerous monuments and museum displays emerging out of these discussions, the Gulag's legacy remains hotly contested in Russia today
From Incarceration to Repatriation
Author: Susan C. I. Grunewald
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501776045
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Book Description
From Incarceration to Repatriation explores the lives and memories of the nearly 1.5 million German POWs who were held by the Soviet Union during and after World War II and released in phases through 1956, seven years longer than the prisoners of any other Allied nation. Susan C. I. Grunewald argues that Soviet leadership deliberately kept able-bodied German POWs to supplement their labor force after the end of the war. The Soviet Union lost 27 million citizens and a quarter of its physical assets during the war, motivating Soviet leadership to harness the labor of German POWs for as long as possible. Engaging with recently declassified documents in former Soviet archives, archival material from multiple German governments, as well as innovative use of digital humanities methods and geographic information system (GIS) mapping, Grunewald demonstrates that Soviet authorities detained German POWs primarily for economic rather than punitive reasons. In fact, the GIS mapping of the historical materials makes it clear that most of the four thousand POW camps across the USSR were strategically located near industrial, infrastructure, and natural resource sites that were critical to postwar economic reconstruction. From Incarceration to Repatriation is the first book to draw together the distinct fields of Soviet and German history to provide a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of German POW captivity in the USSR during and after World War II. Attending to the ways that the memory of German POWs remains in circulation in both the former Soviet Union and Germany, Grunewald tracks the political repercussions of war commemoration.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501776045
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Book Description
From Incarceration to Repatriation explores the lives and memories of the nearly 1.5 million German POWs who were held by the Soviet Union during and after World War II and released in phases through 1956, seven years longer than the prisoners of any other Allied nation. Susan C. I. Grunewald argues that Soviet leadership deliberately kept able-bodied German POWs to supplement their labor force after the end of the war. The Soviet Union lost 27 million citizens and a quarter of its physical assets during the war, motivating Soviet leadership to harness the labor of German POWs for as long as possible. Engaging with recently declassified documents in former Soviet archives, archival material from multiple German governments, as well as innovative use of digital humanities methods and geographic information system (GIS) mapping, Grunewald demonstrates that Soviet authorities detained German POWs primarily for economic rather than punitive reasons. In fact, the GIS mapping of the historical materials makes it clear that most of the four thousand POW camps across the USSR were strategically located near industrial, infrastructure, and natural resource sites that were critical to postwar economic reconstruction. From Incarceration to Repatriation is the first book to draw together the distinct fields of Soviet and German history to provide a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of German POW captivity in the USSR during and after World War II. Attending to the ways that the memory of German POWs remains in circulation in both the former Soviet Union and Germany, Grunewald tracks the political repercussions of war commemoration.
Buddhist Approach to Global Education in Ethics
Author: Thich Duc Thien
Publisher: VIETNAM BUDDHIST UNIVERSITY PUBLICATIONS
ISBN: 6048979282
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 765
Book Description
EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION This volume is a collection of papers presented at the international workshop on “Buddhist Approach to Global Education in Ethics” which is being held on May 13, 2019, at International Conference Center Tam Chuc, Ha Nam, Vietnam on the occasion of the 16th United Nations Day of Vesak Celebrations 2019. The aim is to throw new light on the values of the global ethical system with a focus on the Buddhist approach in deepening our understanding of how Buddhist ethics can deliver a social change in the globalized world. REVIEW OF CONTENTS Prof. P. D. Premasiri in his paper titled “Universally valid ethical norms of Buddhism applicable to global education in ethics” deals with hindrance in determining the basis for global education in ethics and providing undeniable facts about the diversity involved in ethical norms, principles and attitudes of various global communities. The author also discusses the characteristics of Buddhist teaching on a humanistic approach to the moral life with perceptions of enlightened humans, i.e. ‘Knowledgeable Persons’ (vi¤¤å purisà). The paper places further emphasis on the necessity to draw the attention of educators to train the minds of humans on ethical choices in accordance with such decisions. The paper entitled “Teaching Buddhist Ethics through the Life of the Buddha and Jesus” by Abraham Velez De Cea has proposed a new approach to the Buddhist ethical way of teaching and its application through interpretations of the Buddha’s life from the perspective of virtue ethics and meditation. The purpose is to heighten the Buddhist contribution being made to global education in ethical issues. The paper is divided into two parts, Buddhist ethics as a form of virtue ethics and secondly, interpretation of the Buddha’s teachings from the perspective of virtue ethics and meditation.
Publisher: VIETNAM BUDDHIST UNIVERSITY PUBLICATIONS
ISBN: 6048979282
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 765
Book Description
EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION This volume is a collection of papers presented at the international workshop on “Buddhist Approach to Global Education in Ethics” which is being held on May 13, 2019, at International Conference Center Tam Chuc, Ha Nam, Vietnam on the occasion of the 16th United Nations Day of Vesak Celebrations 2019. The aim is to throw new light on the values of the global ethical system with a focus on the Buddhist approach in deepening our understanding of how Buddhist ethics can deliver a social change in the globalized world. REVIEW OF CONTENTS Prof. P. D. Premasiri in his paper titled “Universally valid ethical norms of Buddhism applicable to global education in ethics” deals with hindrance in determining the basis for global education in ethics and providing undeniable facts about the diversity involved in ethical norms, principles and attitudes of various global communities. The author also discusses the characteristics of Buddhist teaching on a humanistic approach to the moral life with perceptions of enlightened humans, i.e. ‘Knowledgeable Persons’ (vi¤¤å purisà). The paper places further emphasis on the necessity to draw the attention of educators to train the minds of humans on ethical choices in accordance with such decisions. The paper entitled “Teaching Buddhist Ethics through the Life of the Buddha and Jesus” by Abraham Velez De Cea has proposed a new approach to the Buddhist ethical way of teaching and its application through interpretations of the Buddha’s life from the perspective of virtue ethics and meditation. The purpose is to heighten the Buddhist contribution being made to global education in ethical issues. The paper is divided into two parts, Buddhist ethics as a form of virtue ethics and secondly, interpretation of the Buddha’s teachings from the perspective of virtue ethics and meditation.
Czechoslovakia between Stalin and Hitler
Author: Igor Lukes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199880255
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 349
Book Description
The Munich crisis of 1938, in which Great Britain and France decided to appease Hitler's demands to annex the Sudentenland, has provoked a vast amount of historical writing. The era has been thoroughly examined from the perspectives of Germans, French, and British political establishments. But historians have had, until now, only a vague understanding of the roles played by the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, the country whose very existence was at the very center of the crisis. In Czechoslovakia Between Stalin and Hitler, Igor Lukes explores this turbulent and tragic era from the new perspective of the Prague government itself. At the center of this study is Edvard Benes, a Czechoslovak foreign policy strategist and a major player in the political machinations of the era. The work looks at the first two decades of Benes's diplomacy and analyzes the Prague Government's attempts to secure the existence of the Republic of Czechoslovakia in the treacherous space between the millstones of the East and West. It studies Benes's relationship with Joseph Stalin, outlines the role assigned to Czechoslovak communists by the VIIth Congress of the Communist International in 1935, and dissects Prague's secret negotiations with Berlin and Benes's role in the famous Tukhachevsky affair. The work also brings evidence regarding the so-called partial mobilization of the Czechoslovak army in May 1938, and focuses on Stalin's strategic thinking on the eve of the World War II. Until the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was difficult for Western researchers to gain access to the rich archival collections of the East. Czechoslovakia Between Stalin and Hitler makes ample use of these secret archives, both in Prague and in Russia. As a result, it is an accurate and original rendition of the events which eventually sparked the Second World War.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199880255
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 349
Book Description
The Munich crisis of 1938, in which Great Britain and France decided to appease Hitler's demands to annex the Sudentenland, has provoked a vast amount of historical writing. The era has been thoroughly examined from the perspectives of Germans, French, and British political establishments. But historians have had, until now, only a vague understanding of the roles played by the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, the country whose very existence was at the very center of the crisis. In Czechoslovakia Between Stalin and Hitler, Igor Lukes explores this turbulent and tragic era from the new perspective of the Prague government itself. At the center of this study is Edvard Benes, a Czechoslovak foreign policy strategist and a major player in the political machinations of the era. The work looks at the first two decades of Benes's diplomacy and analyzes the Prague Government's attempts to secure the existence of the Republic of Czechoslovakia in the treacherous space between the millstones of the East and West. It studies Benes's relationship with Joseph Stalin, outlines the role assigned to Czechoslovak communists by the VIIth Congress of the Communist International in 1935, and dissects Prague's secret negotiations with Berlin and Benes's role in the famous Tukhachevsky affair. The work also brings evidence regarding the so-called partial mobilization of the Czechoslovak army in May 1938, and focuses on Stalin's strategic thinking on the eve of the World War II. Until the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was difficult for Western researchers to gain access to the rich archival collections of the East. Czechoslovakia Between Stalin and Hitler makes ample use of these secret archives, both in Prague and in Russia. As a result, it is an accurate and original rendition of the events which eventually sparked the Second World War.
The Politics of Retribution in Europe
Author: István Deák
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400832055
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350
Book Description
The presentation of Europe's immediate historical past has quite dramatically changed. Conventional depictions of occupation and collaboration in World War II, of wartime resistance and post-war renewal, provided the familiar backdrop against which the chronicle of post-war Europe has mostly been told. Within these often ritualistic presentations, it was possible to conceal the fact that not only were the majority of people in Hitler's Europe not resistance fighters but millions actively co-operated with and many millions more rather easily accommodated to Nazi rule. Moreover, after the war, those who judged former collaborators were sometimes themselves former collaborators. Many people became innocent victims of retribution, while others--among them notorious war criminals--escaped punishment. Nonetheless, the process of retribution was not useless but rather a historically unique effort to purify the continent of the many sins Europeans had committed. This book sheds light on the collective amnesia that overtook European governments and peoples regarding their own responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity--an amnesia that has only recently begun to dissipate as a result of often painful searching across the continent. In inspiring essays, a group of internationally renowned scholars unravels the moral and political choices facing European governments in the war's aftermath: how to punish the guilty, how to decide who was guilty of what, how to convert often unspeakable and conflicted war experiences and memories into serviceable, even uplifting accounts of national history. In short, these scholars explore how the drama of the immediate past was (and was not) successfully "overcome." Through their comparative and transnational emphasis, they also illuminate the division between eastern and western Europe, locating its origins both in the war and in post-war domestic and international affairs. Here, as in their discussion of collaborators' trials, the authors lay bare the roots of the many unresolved and painful memories clouding present-day Europe. Contributors are Brad Abrams, Martin Conway, Sarah Farmer, Luc Huyse, László Karsai, Mark Mazower, and Peter Romijn, as well as the editors. Taken separately, their essays are significant contributions to the contemporary history of several European countries. Taken together, they represent an original and pathbreaking account of a formative moment in the shaping of Europe at the dawn of a new millennium.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400832055
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350
Book Description
The presentation of Europe's immediate historical past has quite dramatically changed. Conventional depictions of occupation and collaboration in World War II, of wartime resistance and post-war renewal, provided the familiar backdrop against which the chronicle of post-war Europe has mostly been told. Within these often ritualistic presentations, it was possible to conceal the fact that not only were the majority of people in Hitler's Europe not resistance fighters but millions actively co-operated with and many millions more rather easily accommodated to Nazi rule. Moreover, after the war, those who judged former collaborators were sometimes themselves former collaborators. Many people became innocent victims of retribution, while others--among them notorious war criminals--escaped punishment. Nonetheless, the process of retribution was not useless but rather a historically unique effort to purify the continent of the many sins Europeans had committed. This book sheds light on the collective amnesia that overtook European governments and peoples regarding their own responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity--an amnesia that has only recently begun to dissipate as a result of often painful searching across the continent. In inspiring essays, a group of internationally renowned scholars unravels the moral and political choices facing European governments in the war's aftermath: how to punish the guilty, how to decide who was guilty of what, how to convert often unspeakable and conflicted war experiences and memories into serviceable, even uplifting accounts of national history. In short, these scholars explore how the drama of the immediate past was (and was not) successfully "overcome." Through their comparative and transnational emphasis, they also illuminate the division between eastern and western Europe, locating its origins both in the war and in post-war domestic and international affairs. Here, as in their discussion of collaborators' trials, the authors lay bare the roots of the many unresolved and painful memories clouding present-day Europe. Contributors are Brad Abrams, Martin Conway, Sarah Farmer, Luc Huyse, László Karsai, Mark Mazower, and Peter Romijn, as well as the editors. Taken separately, their essays are significant contributions to the contemporary history of several European countries. Taken together, they represent an original and pathbreaking account of a formative moment in the shaping of Europe at the dawn of a new millennium.
The Cambridge History of Communism
Author: Norman Naimark
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781107133549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 700
Book Description
The second volume of The Cambridge History of Communism explores the rise of Communist states and movements after World War II. Leading experts analyze archival sources from formerly Communist states to re-examine the limits to Moscow's control of its satellites; the de-Stalinization of 1956; Communist reform movements; the rise and fall of the Sino-Soviet alliance; the growth of Communism in Asia, Africa and Latin America; and the effects of the Sino-Soviet split on world Communism. Chapters explore the cultures of Communism in the United States, Western Europe and China, and the conflicts engendered by nationalism and the continued need for support from Moscow. With the danger of a new Cold War developing between former and current Communist states and the West, this account of the roots, development and dissolution of the socialist bloc is essential reading.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781107133549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 700
Book Description
The second volume of The Cambridge History of Communism explores the rise of Communist states and movements after World War II. Leading experts analyze archival sources from formerly Communist states to re-examine the limits to Moscow's control of its satellites; the de-Stalinization of 1956; Communist reform movements; the rise and fall of the Sino-Soviet alliance; the growth of Communism in Asia, Africa and Latin America; and the effects of the Sino-Soviet split on world Communism. Chapters explore the cultures of Communism in the United States, Western Europe and China, and the conflicts engendered by nationalism and the continued need for support from Moscow. With the danger of a new Cold War developing between former and current Communist states and the West, this account of the roots, development and dissolution of the socialist bloc is essential reading.
Historical Abstracts
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History, Modern
Languages : en
Pages : 608
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History, Modern
Languages : en
Pages : 608
Book Description
Empire of Friends
Author: Rachel Applebaum
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501735586
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
The familiar story of Soviet power in Cold War Eastern Europe focuses on political repression and military force. But in Empire of Friends, Rachel Applebaum shows how the Soviet Union simultaneously promoted a policy of transnational friendship with its Eastern Bloc satellites to create a cohesive socialist world. This friendship project resulted in a new type of imperial control based on cross-border contacts between ordinary citizens. In a new and fascinating story of cultural diplomacy, interpersonal relations, and the trade of consumer-goods, Applebaum tracks the rise and fall of the friendship project in Czechoslovakia, as the country evolved after World War II from the Soviet Union's most loyal satellite to its most rebellious. Throughout Eastern Europe, the friendship project shaped the most intimate aspects of people's lives, influencing everything from what they wore to where they traveled to whom they married. Applebaum argues that in Czechoslovakia, socialist friendship was surprisingly durable, capable of surviving the ravages of Stalinism and the Soviet invasion that crushed the 1968 Prague Spring. Eventually, the project became so successful that it undermined the very alliance it was designed to support: as Soviets and Czechoslovaks got to know one another, they discovered important cultural and political differences that contradicted propaganda about a cohesive socialist world. Empire of Friends reveals that the sphere of everyday life was central to the construction of the transnational socialist system in Eastern Europe—and, ultimately, its collapse.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501735586
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
The familiar story of Soviet power in Cold War Eastern Europe focuses on political repression and military force. But in Empire of Friends, Rachel Applebaum shows how the Soviet Union simultaneously promoted a policy of transnational friendship with its Eastern Bloc satellites to create a cohesive socialist world. This friendship project resulted in a new type of imperial control based on cross-border contacts between ordinary citizens. In a new and fascinating story of cultural diplomacy, interpersonal relations, and the trade of consumer-goods, Applebaum tracks the rise and fall of the friendship project in Czechoslovakia, as the country evolved after World War II from the Soviet Union's most loyal satellite to its most rebellious. Throughout Eastern Europe, the friendship project shaped the most intimate aspects of people's lives, influencing everything from what they wore to where they traveled to whom they married. Applebaum argues that in Czechoslovakia, socialist friendship was surprisingly durable, capable of surviving the ravages of Stalinism and the Soviet invasion that crushed the 1968 Prague Spring. Eventually, the project became so successful that it undermined the very alliance it was designed to support: as Soviets and Czechoslovaks got to know one another, they discovered important cultural and political differences that contradicted propaganda about a cohesive socialist world. Empire of Friends reveals that the sphere of everyday life was central to the construction of the transnational socialist system in Eastern Europe—and, ultimately, its collapse.
The Last Utopia
Author: Samuel Moyn
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674256522
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346
Book Description
Human rights offer a vision of international justice that today’s idealistic millions hold dear. Yet the very concept on which the movement is based became familiar only a few decades ago when it profoundly reshaped our hopes for an improved humanity. In this pioneering book, Samuel Moyn elevates that extraordinary transformation to center stage and asks what it reveals about the ideal’s troubled present and uncertain future. For some, human rights stretch back to the dawn of Western civilization, the age of the American and French Revolutions, or the post–World War II moment when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was framed. Revisiting these episodes in a dramatic tour of humanity’s moral history, The Last Utopia shows that it was in the decade after 1968 that human rights began to make sense to broad communities of people as the proper cause of justice. Across eastern and western Europe, as well as throughout the United States and Latin America, human rights crystallized in a few short years as social activism and political rhetoric moved it from the hallways of the United Nations to the global forefront. It was on the ruins of earlier political utopias, Moyn argues, that human rights achieved contemporary prominence. The morality of individual rights substituted for the soiled political dreams of revolutionary communism and nationalism as international law became an alternative to popular struggle and bloody violence. But as the ideal of human rights enters into rival political agendas, it requires more vigilance and scrutiny than when it became the watchword of our hopes.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674256522
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346
Book Description
Human rights offer a vision of international justice that today’s idealistic millions hold dear. Yet the very concept on which the movement is based became familiar only a few decades ago when it profoundly reshaped our hopes for an improved humanity. In this pioneering book, Samuel Moyn elevates that extraordinary transformation to center stage and asks what it reveals about the ideal’s troubled present and uncertain future. For some, human rights stretch back to the dawn of Western civilization, the age of the American and French Revolutions, or the post–World War II moment when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was framed. Revisiting these episodes in a dramatic tour of humanity’s moral history, The Last Utopia shows that it was in the decade after 1968 that human rights began to make sense to broad communities of people as the proper cause of justice. Across eastern and western Europe, as well as throughout the United States and Latin America, human rights crystallized in a few short years as social activism and political rhetoric moved it from the hallways of the United Nations to the global forefront. It was on the ruins of earlier political utopias, Moyn argues, that human rights achieved contemporary prominence. The morality of individual rights substituted for the soiled political dreams of revolutionary communism and nationalism as international law became an alternative to popular struggle and bloody violence. But as the ideal of human rights enters into rival political agendas, it requires more vigilance and scrutiny than when it became the watchword of our hopes.