Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union

Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union PDF Author: Gyorgy Peteri
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 082297391X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
This volume presents work from an international group of writers who explore conceptualizations of what defined "East" and "West" in Eastern Europe, imperial Russia, and the Soviet Union. The contributors analyze the effects of transnational interactions on ideology, politics, and cultural production. They reveal that the roots of an East/West cultural divide were present many years prior to the rise of socialism and the Cold War. The chapters offer insights into the complex stages of adoption and rejection of Western ideals in areas such as architecture, travel writings, film, music, health care, consumer products, political propaganda, and human rights. They describe a process of mental mapping whereby individuals "captured and possessed" Western identity through cultural encounters and developed their own interpretations from these experiences. Despite these imaginaries, political and intellectual elites devised responses of resistance, defiance, and counterattack to defy Western impositions. Socialists believed that their cultural forms and collectivist strategies offered morally and materially better lives for the masses and the true path to a modern society. Their sentiments toward the West, however, fluctuated between superiority and inferiority. But in material terms, Western products, industry, and technology, became the ever-present yardstick by which progress was measured. The contributors conclude that the commodification of the necessities of modern life and the rise of consumerism in the twentieth century made it impossible for communist states to meet the demands of their citizens. The West eventually won the battle of supply and demand, and thus the battle for cultural influence.

Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union

Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union PDF Author: Gyorgy Peteri
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 082297391X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume presents work from an international group of writers who explore conceptualizations of what defined "East" and "West" in Eastern Europe, imperial Russia, and the Soviet Union. The contributors analyze the effects of transnational interactions on ideology, politics, and cultural production. They reveal that the roots of an East/West cultural divide were present many years prior to the rise of socialism and the Cold War. The chapters offer insights into the complex stages of adoption and rejection of Western ideals in areas such as architecture, travel writings, film, music, health care, consumer products, political propaganda, and human rights. They describe a process of mental mapping whereby individuals "captured and possessed" Western identity through cultural encounters and developed their own interpretations from these experiences. Despite these imaginaries, political and intellectual elites devised responses of resistance, defiance, and counterattack to defy Western impositions. Socialists believed that their cultural forms and collectivist strategies offered morally and materially better lives for the masses and the true path to a modern society. Their sentiments toward the West, however, fluctuated between superiority and inferiority. But in material terms, Western products, industry, and technology, became the ever-present yardstick by which progress was measured. The contributors conclude that the commodification of the necessities of modern life and the rise of consumerism in the twentieth century made it impossible for communist states to meet the demands of their citizens. The West eventually won the battle of supply and demand, and thus the battle for cultural influence.

Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union

Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union PDF Author: György Péteri
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781306944397
Category : East and West
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
This volume presents work from an international group of writers who explore conceptualizations of what defined East and West in Eastern Europe, imperial Russia, and the Soviet Union. The contributors analyze the effects of transnational interactions on ideology, politics, and cultural production. They reveal that the roots of an East/West cultural divide were present many years prior to the rise of socialism and the cold war. The chapters offer insights into the complex stages of adoption and rejection of Western ideals in areas such as architecture, travel writings, film, music, health care, consumer products, political propaganda, and human rights. They describe a process of mental mapping whereby individuals captured and possessed Western identity through cultural encounters and developed their own interpretations from these experiences. Despite these imaginaries, political and intellectual elites devised responses of resistance, defiance, and counterattack to defy Western impositions. Socialists believed that their cultural forms and collectivist strategies offered morally and materially better lives for the masses and the true path to a modern society. Their sentiments toward the West, however, fluctuated between superiority and inferiority. But in material terms, Western products, industry, and technology, became the ever-present yardstick by which progress was measured. The contributors conclude that the commodification of the necessities of modern life and the rise of consumerism in the twentieth century made it impossible for communist states to meet the demands of their citizens. The West eventually won the battle of supply and demand, and thus the battle for cultural influence. "

Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union

Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union PDF Author: György Péteri
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822961253
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
An international group of writers explore conceptualizations of what defined “East” and “West” in Eastern Europe, imperial Russia, and the Soviet Union. The contributors analyze the effects of transnational interactions on ideology, politics, and cultural production.

U.S. Policy Toward Eastern Europe And The Soviet Union

U.S. Policy Toward Eastern Europe And The Soviet Union PDF Author: Robert F. Byrnes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100000998X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
This volume consists of a collection of essays written by Professor Byrnes between 1956 and 1988. The papers vary considerably in focus and include policy issues that were significant at the time, with the Cold War analyses around the post-war containment theory. In addition, there is a consistent viewpoint and argument in Byrnes reflections on East-West relations. A central theme throughout the collection is the essential correctness of U.S. foreign policy toward the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe between 1946 and 1988.

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949: Eastern Europe; the Soviet Union

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949: Eastern Europe; the Soviet Union PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 1032

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Book Description


The Reform of Housing in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union

The Reform of Housing in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union PDF Author: Jozsef Hegedus
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134911440
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe

The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe PDF Author: Constantin Iordachi
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 615522563X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 571

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Book Description
ÿThis book explores the interrelated campaigns of agricultural collectivization in the USSR and in the communist dictatorships established in Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe. Despite the profound, long-term societal impact of collectivization, the subject has remained relatively underresearched. The volume combines detailed studies of collectivization in individual Eastern European states with issueoriented comparative perspectives at regional level. Based on novel primary sources, it proposes a reappraisal of the theoretical underpinnings and research agenda of studies on collectivization in Eastern Europe.The contributions provide up-to-date overviews of recent research in the field and promote new approaches to the topic, combining historical comparisons with studies of transnational transfers and entanglements.

The Soviet Union and Cold War Neutrality and Nonalignment in Europe

The Soviet Union and Cold War Neutrality and Nonalignment in Europe PDF Author: Mark Kramer
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 179363193X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 645

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Book Description
The Soviet Union and Cold War Neutrality and Nonalignment in Europe examines how the neutral European countries and the Soviet Union interacted after World War II. Amid the Cold War division of Europe into Western and Eastern blocs, several long-time neutral countries abandoned neutrality and joined NATO. Other countries remained neutral but were still perceived as a threat to the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence. Based on extensive archival research, this volume offers state-of-the-art essays about relations between Europe’s neutral states and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and how these relations were perceived by other powers.

Disability in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union

Disability in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union PDF Author: Michael Rasell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317962206
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
There are over thirty million disabled people in Russia and Eastern Europe, yet their voices are rarely heard in scholarly studies of life and well-being in the region. This book brings together new research by internationally recognised local and non-native scholars in a range of countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. It covers, historically, the origins of legacies that continue to affect well-being and policy in the region today. Discussions of disability in culture and society highlight the broader conditions in which disabled people must build their identities and well-being whilst in-depth biographical profiles outline what living with disabilities in the region is like. Chapters on policy interventions, including international influences, examine recent reforms and the difficulties of implementing inclusive, community-based care. The book will be of interest both to regional specialists, for whom well-being, equality and human rights are crucial concerns, and to scholars of disability and social policy internationally.

Iron Curtain

Iron Curtain PDF Author: Anne Applebaum
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385536437
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 803

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Book Description
In the long-awaited follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. She draws on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray in devastating detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. Today the Soviet Bloc is a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in the electrifying pages of Iron Curtain.